Why does the investigation of every crime in Russia cost almost a million rubles, what is a “security theater” and is it possible to prevent an explosion in the metro?
At the “” festival, Kirill Titaev, a leading researcher at the Institute of Law Enforcement Problems of the European University in St. Petersburg, spoke about how the security system in Russia is structured and why it is ineffective. "Paper" publishes the main points from the sociologist's lecture.
Three quarters of deaths in Russia are due to disease, and every 40th is a murder
According to 2016 statistics, 47% of deaths are a consequence of cardiovascular diseases, 18% of unidentified causes, 16% of oncology, 11% of other diseases, 8% of external causes, including murder.
Kirill Titaev
Three quarters of deaths are due to disease, and one in 40 deaths is a homicide. Maybe we need to at least halve the budget of the law enforcement system and start doing something about cardiovascular diseases? This question probably comes to mind to any person who begins to understand statistics.
Proponents of spending more money on law enforcement than on health care make several arguments. First, death from disease tends to occur later than death from criminal violence. While people often die from illness closer to old age, the greatest likelihood of dying from criminal violence is between 25 and 35 years old. Secondly, in addition to murders, there are other crimes: theft, fraud, telephone terrorism, which also need to be fought. In addition, the crime rate directly affects the state of trust in society.
Kirill Titaev, leading researcher at the Institute of Law Enforcement Problems of the European University:
The good news: according to sociological data, mutual trust in Russia has been continuously growing since the early 2000s. Before this, it was impossible to imagine that a person leaving his wallet on the table when going to the toilet in a restaurant. We are less afraid, and this is useful: resting instead of stressing and worrying. In this regard, effective crime control brings quite a lot of benefits.
The amount spent on investigating one crime exceeds the damage it causes
977 thousand rubles are spent on investigating one crime in Russia. Despite the fact that a typical crime - the most widespread of those that are being investigated - is shoplifting under camera. And the property damage of an average crime is 260 thousand rubles.
Kirill Titaev, leading researcher at the Institute of Law Enforcement Problems of the European University:
This is a very bad statistic, but we have no other. That's why it's bad. Relatively speaking, in 2004 the average damage was half a million rubles. Because all the damage that was then charged in the YUKOS case was included in these statistics.
Because of this gap in amounts, criminology is discussing the possibility of paying victims compensation in the amount of damage they suffered without catching the criminals.
In Russia, tens of millions of rubles are spent on the fight against terrorism. But how big the real threat is is unclear
According to Kirill Titaev’s calculations, about 65 people a year die from terrorism in the country, and according to the most radical estimate of law enforcement agencies, about 90–100 (it takes into account the years of the war with Chechnya and the tragedy in Beslan).
Kirill Titaev, leading researcher at the Institute of Law Enforcement Problems of the European University:
I would like to give beautiful figures on the financing of the fight against terrorism, but there are none. They are classified. However, we can name those figures that accidentally surfaced only at the regional level - without the participation of large federal players like the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Investigative Committee, and so on. For example, in the Astrakhan region in 2014 they spent 120 million rubles on the fight against terrorism. If we extrapolate this across the population, we get 10 billion: that is, for each death, 100 million rubles are spent from regional budgets alone.
Terror, as Titaev notes, causes fear in people, which forces them, for example, not to go down to the subway: this was the case after the terrorist attack in St. Petersburg on April 3, when the next day at rush hour one could see free cars. “Yes, terrorism must be fought, no one denies this. But how important is this threat? This is a big question. We see that today the whole world looks at this as an extremely important threat.”
Metal detectors and security guards are 'theatrical gestures' to calm people down
The world around us should see a “reaction to threats,” explains Kirill Titaev. He calls this reaction “theatrical gestures” in response to real events. One such example is the frames of metal detectors in the subway. They cost the city no less than 50 million rubles, and the daily work of additional inspectors cost no less than 150 million rubles a year. However, such measures are not effective.
For example, recently there was an attack on journalist Tatyana Felgengauer in the editorial office of Ekho Moskvy: in order to get into the building, the criminal hit a security guard in the face with a gas canister and crawled under the turnstile. It turned out that the system does not help protect people in the building from those who actually have criminal intentions. At the same time, the time of employees who take out and show their passports at the entrance every morning, and money for the salaries of security guards is wasted.
However, the guards themselves have nothing to blame, says Titaev, since they were doing their job, were not protected by glass and could not expect an attack from everyone.
Kirill Titaev, leading researcher at the Institute of Law Enforcement Problems of the European University:
Several years ago, a team of journalists conducted the following experiment, I was an observer. They tried to get onto the territory of the university, carrying with them a large model of a pistol and not having any documents. In all cases this was successful. The method is extremely simple: we put on courier clothes that say “Delivery of something” and show the envelope “to the Rector personally for signature.” All.
In the current security system, security personnel are hired to perform the most basic actions, such as checking documents: it makes no sense to hire qualified employees for such work. Thus, according to Titaev, people with very low qualifications are starting to take charge of ensuring security.
Security measures at airports and subways were not proposed by experts
One of the most important tools for detecting explosives is a dog’s nose, says Kirill Titaev, and it would be more effective to allocate funds from the budget for dog handlers instead of limits.
Kirill Titaev , leading researcher at the Institute of Law Enforcement Problems of the European University:
Metal detectors are a direct order from the first person, a person who has not entered the stations as a passenger for a very long time and, in general, does not understand anything about law enforcement (we are talking about the installation of metal frames at the railway stations of St. Petersburg and Moscow on the instructions of Dmitry Medvedev - approx. "Papers"). Because he never studied this specifically: a criminology course, a criminology course, a law enforcement course, taken at the law department of Leningrad University, and that’s all. This is again a striking theatrical gesture. The situation with inspection at the entrance to the airport is even worse: gigantic queues accumulate there - and thereby create conditions for a terrorist attack.
It is noteworthy that Russian cities had different attitudes to the idea of installing metal detector frames: most of all this measure was supported by those cities that do not have a metro, and especially those that do not have an effectively used railway: “Relatively speaking, Priozersk was categorically beyond the limits, and St. Petersburg was categorically against it.”
As another example of a non-expert reaction, Titaev recalls the situation with the publication of an article in Novaya Gazeta, which revealed VKontakte communities that allegedly called on teenagers to commit suicide. After this, an additional article on propaganda of suicide was introduced into the Criminal Code, and the first trials in this case should soon take place.
Kirill Titaev, leading researcher at the Institute of Law Enforcement Problems of the European University:
What features of the system do we see in this example? Firstly, such a reaction is almost never, in my opinion, based on an analysis of the scale of the problem and its significance. The second is, of course, a total disregard for the realism of the measures themselves. As soon as this wave about teenage suicide passes, everyone will forget about this article, because it is impossible to identify and prove such crimes. This is beyond human power. As I already said, non-professionals often do this kind of thing: I am ready to trust Yarovaya’s expertise in the field of corruption, but not so much in her expertise in the field of teenage communication on social networks.
Protection against terrorist attacks in the metro is a problem that cannot yet be solved
Security solutions must be based on an analysis of the scale and reality of the threat, be implementable and aimed at criminals, not their tools - with some exceptions, for example, the ban on assault weapons must be maintained. And such decisions should not complicate the lives of ordinary citizens.
Restricting the access of people with explosives to the metro is a task that cannot be accomplished, Titaev believes. Places where large numbers of people gather have always been and will be objects of increased danger: “It is better to do nothing than to do obviously useless things.” At the same time, the metro should be responsible for the safety of passengers, but not in cases of terrorism.
Kirill Titaev, leading researcher at the Institute of Law Enforcement Problems of the European University:
It is very important to separate: there are organized networks - religious, political; but the worst thing we have is the initiative loner. It takes 5-7 minutes to find diagrams on how to make a suitable device, and making the device itself is also not difficult. This cannot be prevented in any way. If the terrorist attack in St. Petersburg was prepared by a group, you can blame the FSB officers who did not track, did not warn, and did not arrest before. If it was a loner who did it, how were they supposed to track him? Check every crazy person?
It is likely that with the development of technology in the future, sensors and cameras will appear that will be able to capture the entire flow and recognize and identify all faces. Then new real measures to prevent terrorist attacks will appear.
Today, for the frame to work at full capacity, a person must have about 8 kilograms of iron with him. And if it worked half-heartedly, it could be a reaction to a laptop, a pocket knife, or a large all-metal pen, and therefore the person may not be stopped. “People who do inspections understand that this is a pointless job. You cannot force a single person to work well if 90% of his work is meaningless. Those 10% will be performed poorly,” says Titaev.
The crime rate in Russia is decreasing, reports the Russian Prosecutor General's Office. But whether this is related to security measures is unknown
Today the number of road accidents, suicides, and murders has decreased. There are many hypotheses about this - for example, about the influence of computer games and social networks on the situation, because of which teenage gangs have partly disappeared from the streets. But it is unknown whether the decrease in crime is due to the security measures taken. In particular, setting the framework, since there are no facts of detaining terrorists with their help. In addition, it is worth considering the trend of a worldwide decline in crime rates.
Research Director
Candidate of Sociological Sciences
Master of Sociology EUSP (MA in sociology, diploma validated by the University of Helsinki)
Scientific interests: Sociology of law, law enforcement, police, judicial system. Empirical jurisprudence
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You must have JavaScript enabled to view it.
Education
Faculty of Political Science and Sociology of the European University in St. Petersburg", master's degree, three-year academic program of the European University in St. Petersburg (2008)
Institute of Social Sciences, Irkutsk State University, majoring in Sociology, 2005 (honors degree)
Professional experience
Before starting work at the Institute of Law Enforcement Problems, since 1999 he worked at the Higher School of Economics, the Center for Independent Social Research and Education (Irkutsk), and the system of additional education. Participated as a researcher, expert, organizer and leader in marketing, educational and educational projects.
Along with academic work: publications in the media (Vedomosti, RBC, more than 100 publications), participation in educational projects on general sociological topics.
Actively worked as an expert on sociological research methods, teaching methodological courses from 2003 to 2017.
Main current projects
- July 2017 – present “Mechanisms for the functioning of control and supervisory activities”, supported by the Institute of Applied Sciences at the European University of St. Petersburg, researcher.
- March 2017 – present “Research on social control and mobilization of law using big data”, supported by the Russian Science Foundation, leading researcher
- July 2017 – present “Passport and registration system: prospects for reform”, supported by CSR, project manager
- May 2017 – present “Accusatory bias in the Republic of Kazakhstan”, supported by the Council of Europe, project leader
Key publications
Sociology of law and empirical jurisprudence
- Pretrial detention in Russian criminal courts: a statistical analysis // International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 145-161
- Russian investigator: calling, profession, everyday life. M.: Norma, 2016. (in collaboration with M. Shklyaruk)
- Russian judges: a sociological study of the profession: monograph / V. Volkov, A. Dmitrieva, M. Pozdnyakov, K. Titaev; edited by V. Volkova. - M.: Norma, 2015. - 272 p.
- Investigators in Russia // Russian Politics & Law, 2016, vol. 54, issue 2-3, p. 112-137 (co-auth. with M. Shkliaruk)
- The State and Business at Arbitrazh Courts // Russian Politics & Law, 2016, vol. 54, issue 2-3, p. 281-311 (co-auth. with A. Dzmitryieva nad I. Chetverikova)
- State and business in the arbitration process // Questions of Economics, 2014, No. 6, pp. 40-62. (co-authored with A. Dmitrieva, I. Chetverikova)
- Concept for Comprehensive Organizational and Managerial Reform of the Law Enforcement Agencies of the RF // Statutes and Decisions, vol. 48, no. 5, September–October 2013, pp. 5–91. (co-authored with Vadim Volkov, Ivan Grigor’ev, Arina Dmitrieva, Ekaterina Moiseeva, Ella Paneiakh, Mikhail Pozdniakov, Kirill Titaev, Irina Chetverikova, and Mariia Shkliaruk)
- Qui qustidiet, or why you need to study lawyers? // Sociology of power, 2016, 3. pp. 8-14.
- Problems and prospects for research based on Big Data (on the example of the sociology of law) // Sociological Research. 2016. No. 1. P. 48-58. (Co-authored with V. Volkov and D. Skugarevsky)
- What is “by law”? History of searching for answers. Word of the editor-compiler // Sociology of power, 2015, No. 2. Ss. 8-15.
- “The language of protocol”: a study of the connection of legal language with professional everyday life and organizational context // Sociology of Power, 2015, No. 2. Ss. 168-206. (co-authored with M. Shklyaruk).
- Pre-trial detention in Russian criminal justice: sociological analysis of the likelihood of pre-trial detention and its influence on the court decision // Economic Sociology Vol. 15. No. 3. May 2014. pp. 88-118.
- Expansion of the legal profession: legalization of bureaucratic language in Russia. Staged essay // Feedback: a book for reading. Collection of articles and essays for the 60th anniversary of Mikhail Rozhansky / ed. D. Dimke, K. Titaev, S. Schmidt. – St. Petersburg; Irkutsk: Norma, Center for Independent Social Research and Education, 2014. – 408 pp.: ill. Ss. 269 – 276.
- Smart cops. Why all projects to improve law enforcement in Russia failed // Sociology of Power, 2012, No. 4-5 (1), pp. 96-110.
- The appellate instance in Russian arbitration courts: the problem of the judicial hierarchy // How judges make decisions: empirical studies of law / Ed. V.V. Volkova. – M.: Statute, 2012. – 368 p. – (EXTRA JUS Series) Ss. 224 – 249.
- Study of the work of Russian arbitration courts using statistical analysis methods / ed. K. Titaeva. - St. Petersburg: Institute of Law Enforcement Problems at the European University in St. Petersburg, 2012. - 108 p. (co-authored with A. Dmitrieva and I. Chetverikova)
- // Passport and registration system in the Russian Federation. Efficiency analysis. Ed. B. Panich and E. Rinn. St. Petersburg, 2009, SS. 145 – 160
- // Passport and registration system in the Russian Federation. Efficiency analysis. Ed. B. Panich and E. Rinn. St. Petersburg, 2009, SS 101 -118
Sociology of education and informal economy
- Provincial and native science // Anthropological Forum, 2013, No. 19, pp. 239 – 275. (co-authored with M. Sokolov).
- Academic collusion // Otechestvennye zapiski, 2012, No. 2 (47) pp. 184-194
- How much is the exam for the people? A study on corruption in higher education // Economic Sociology No. 2, 2005, pp. 69-82.
- Industrial forestry: participants and relationships. // Informal economy of forest management participants, practices, relationships. Ed. I. Olimpieva, O. Pachenkova, Z. Solovyova M.: MONF, 2005, pp. 18 - 45
- Informal economics of forest management in the Irkutsk region: a sociological perspective //Forest Bulletin No. 28, June 2005 (in collaboration with Karnaukhov S., Malkevich T., Olimpieva I., Pachenkov O., Solovyova Z., Titov V., Cheremnykh N.)
Selected applied publications
- Excessive criminalization of economic activity in Russia. Analytic note. M., St. Petersburg: TsSR, IPP, 2017. (Co-authored with I. Chetverikova).
- Manifesto of new quantitative criminology “Criminal policy based on data” M.: TsSR, 2017 (co-authored with A. Knorre, V. Kudryavtsev, D. Skugarevsky, M. Shklyaruk)
- Structure and main features of economic crimes in Russia (based on data from 2013–2016) Irina Chetverikova with the participation of Kirill Titaev. Analytical review. M.: TsSR, 2017
- The problem of law enforcement pressure on business: false premises and unpromising proposals. M.: TsSR, 2017. (with the participation of I. Chetverikova, O. Shepeleva, M. Shklyaruk).
- The impact of scheduled inspections on the activities of organizations (Series “Analytical notes on problems of law enforcement”). Authors: Dmitry Skugarevsky, Kirill Titaev, Vladimir Kudryavtsev. St. Petersburg: IPP EUSPb, 2016. - 16 pages.
- Diagnostics of the work of the judicial system in the field of criminal proceedings and proposals for its reform Part I. St. Petersburg: IPP EU St. Petersburg, 2016. In co-author. with T. Bocharov, V. Volkov, A. Dmitrieva, I. Chetverikova, M. Shklyaruk.
- Diagnostics of the work of law enforcement agencies to protect public order and prospects for the creation of municipal police in Russia. Ed. V. Volkova. St. Petersburg: IPP EU St. Petersburg, 2015. (Co-authored with V. Volkov, A. Dmitrieva, E. Khodzhaeva, I. Chetverikova, M. Shklyaruk).
- Volkov V.V., Chetverikova I.V., Paneyakh E.L., Pozdnyakov M.L., Titaev K.D., Shklyaruk M.S. Diagnostics of the work of law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation and their performance of the police function of St. Petersburg: IPP under EU St. Petersburg, 2012
Key conferences
- June 2016 Biennial meeting RCSL working group for comparative studies of legal professions, Andorra, report “Professional Everyday Life of Russian Judges”
- Seminar “Too Few Judges?” Regulating the Number of Judges in Society based on the International Institute for the Sociology of Law, report “The Workload of Russian Judiciary: How It Changed Over Time and What Are the Consequences for Justice in Russia” (co-authored with A. Dmitrieva)
- September 2015 15th annual conference of the European Society of Criminology, Porto, Portugal, report “Judging under pressure: criminal courts in Russia”
- October 2014 14th Annual Aleksanteri Conference “Restructuring State and Society in Russia”, University of Helsinki, report “Investigators (sledovateli) in Russia as a Professional Group: Values, Norms and Professional Culture”
- October 2014 International Conference “Law-Making and Law-Breaking in the Context of Securitization and Neo-conservatism” (Development of the Russian Law – VII), Helsinki University, report “Judges" attitudes to criminal law and criminal procedure reform: sociological data and interviews” (co-authored with Arina Dmitrieva)
- October 2013 International conference “Development of Russian law – VI: Between Tradition and Modernity” Helsinki, Finland. Report “Pretrial Detention in Russian Criminal Courts: Statistical Analysis of the Probability of Detention and Its Influence on the Sentence”
- May – June 2013 International conference “Law and Society Annual Meeting”, Law and Society Association, Boston, USA, report “Pretrial Detention in Russian Criminal Courts: Statistical Analysis of the Probability of Detention and Its Influence on the Sentence”
- October 2012 International Conference “Changing the Russian Law: Legality and Current Challenges” University of Helsinki. Speaker, “The Structure of Convictional Bias in the Russian Criminal Justice”
- June 2012 International Conference on Law and Society (LSA, ISA, CLSA, JASL, SLSA), speaker “How Russian Arbitration (Commercial) Courts Really Work: The Analysis of Court Statistics and Interviews with Judges”
- May 2012 La justice russe au quotidien. Regards sociologiques sur les pratiques judiciaires, Paris, CERI - CERCEC (EHESS-CNRS). Speaker, “Les juges russes comme groupe professionnel” (Russian judges as a professional group). In collaboration with V. Volkov, A. Dmitrieva, M. Pozdnyakov.
Key courses and public lectures
- 2017 “Which roads lead from “socialist legality”” HydePark International Discussion School (Armenia)
- 2017 “Reforms and research: how to prepare decisions” Lecture for the Polit.ru project
- 2016 " Structure and ways of reforming the law enforcement system" Hyde Park Winter Discussion School
- 2016 Public lecture « When justice becomes technology: how courts work in Russia", Open University, St. Petersburg
Latest achievements
The 2017 book “Russian Investigator: Vocation, Profession, Everyday Life” received a review on the website of the Afisha magazine.
2017 Co-director of the research “The Impact of Scheduled Inspections on the Activities of Organizations” and “Diagnostics of the Work of the Judicial System in the Field of Criminal Procedure and Proposals for its Reform,” which were included in the most significant studies about Russia for 2015-2017. (sections "Economics" and "Law and Public Administration") according to the portal IQ.HSE.RU (observer Boris Grozovsky) -
2012-2014 Director, editor and co-author of the studies “Study of the work of Russian arbitration courts using statistical analysis methods”, “How judges make decisions”, “Study of the mechanisms of work of the Russian law enforcement system”, included in the list of the most interesting studies of the OPEC portal
Graduated from the Institute of Social Sciences of Irkutsk State University, majoring in Sociology (specialization - sociology of communications), 2005 (diploma with honors); three-year academic program at the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology. Received a Master's degree in Sociology (the diploma is validated by the University of Helsinki, Finland) (2006)
Participation in competitions:
2002 – 2003
Scholarship holder of the Academic Council of Irkutsk State University
2003 – 2005
Scholarship holder of the President of the Russian Federation
2005
Laureate of the competition of articles of the journal “Economic Sociology” (1st place in the nomination “Debut works”)
2007 – 2008
Spencer Foundation Fellow
2007 – 2008
Oxford Foundation Fellow - Russia
2008
Laureate of the competition for educational developments, manuals, projects and programs to support students’ research activities (Journal “Research Work of Schoolchildren” and the All-Russian Movement of Creative Teachers “Researcher”)
2009
– scholarship holder of the State University Higher School of Economics personnel reserve program
Publications:
- How does the arbitration court make decisions? // Research on law enforcement in Russia. M.: Statute, 2011 (in print)
- Demographic processes and the institute of registration in the Russian Federation // Passport and registration system in the Russian Federation. Efficiency analysis. Ed. B. Panich and E. Rinn. St. Petersburg, 2009, SS. 145 – 160
- The education system and the institute of registration in the Russian Federation // Passport and registration system in the Russian Federation. Efficiency analysis. Ed. B. Panich and E. Rinn. St. Petersburg, 2009, SS. 101 -118
- Industrial forestry: participants and relationships. // Informal economics of forest management, ed. I. Olimpievoy, O. Pachenkova, Z. Solovyova M.: MONF, 2005 (http://www.mpsf.org/files/books/nd1415.pdf)
- How much is the exam for the people? Study on corruption in higher education // Economic Sociology No. 2, 2005 (http://ecsoc.hse.ru/__pdf/data/562/588/1234/ecsoc_t6_n2.pdf)
- From the point of view of power - from the point of view of those under power. Review of the book by J. Scott “The good intentions of the state...” // Journal of Sociology and Social Anthropology, 2006, No. 3, pp. 187 – 193 (http://www.jourssa.ru/2006/3/9aTitaev.pdf)
- Kiakhta et la mondialisation (Kiakhta sur Internet et Internet à Kiakhta en 2003)// Etudes mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines (Paris) n° 38-39. Russie plurielle. Confines et profondeurs. Ed.: Jean-Luc Lambert (EPHE - Paris) et Dany Savelli (Toulouse II) pp 409 – 417.
- Between an astrologer and a poet: the birth and reproduction of provincial science // Thematic collection (title to be confirmed) M.: IS RAS, 2009 (in print)
- “Portugal” in ru-net // Slavica – Iberica Lisbon, 2008. (in collaboration with O. Rusinova, in print)
- Officials, deans and contracts invisible to the world: a response to the article by M. Sokolov // Anthropological Forum 2008, No. 9 (http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/009/09_01_forum.pdf)
- Bolshoye Goloustnoye in the tourism industry: history as a service // Baikal Siberia: fragments of a sociocultural map Research almanac. Vol. 2. Regions. Irkutsk, TsNSIO, 2007.
- "Habitus" of Irkutsk politics. // Baikal Siberia: fragments of a sociocultural map. Irkutsk: ISU, 2002.
- Practical recommendations for conducting research work for schoolchildren in sociology/Research work for schoolchildren. Scientific-methodological and information-journalistic journal, 2008, No. 1, pp. 106-114
- School of Gender // Alternative technology: overcoming gender inequality. Irkutsk: TsNSIO, 2006
Participation in conferences:
December 2010 InLiberty seminar “Violence in Contemporary Liberal Theory”, report “Specialists of State Violence: Who They Are and How They Work”
December 2010 Methodological seminar of St. Petersburg State University Higher School of Economics, report “Methodological strategies and economic base of St. Petersburg sociologists”
December 2010 VDNKh EU St. Petersburg, report “How Russian courts can and should be studied”
October 2010 international conference “Problems of research in modern social sciences and humanities”, Lvov, International Association of Humanists, report “Economic strategies of sociologists of St. Petersburg”
April 2010 International conference “Problems of law enforcement in Russia, opportunities for study”, report “Participation of an official in the Russian arbitration process”
December 2009 VDNH EU SPb, speaker, “Statistics of the Russian arbitration system”
October 2009, XXV session of the International School of Sociology of Science and Technology, speaker, report “Affiliation as a determinant of an academic career”
May 2009, conference “Humanitarian education in Siberian universities: university norms and life chances”, Irkutsk, speaker
April 2009, III Holofast readings, St. Petersburg, speaker
January 2009, XVI international symposium “Paths of Russia”, Moscow, speaker
November 2008, III All-Russian Sociological Congress. Section 28. Sociology of education and modern society. Speaker, moderator of the meeting. Speaker (report “Reasons for the institutionalization of informal economic relations in a Russian university”), moderator of the meeting “Modernization of higher education: general sociological problems”
April 2008 International colloquium “Party and state organizations in the USSR in 1953-1985 - new sources and new topics” (Moscow), speaker (topic of the report: “Party, economic and Soviet bodies in small settlements: possible sources and problems of study”)
April 2008- Conference "Social problems of labor in the transition to innovative development of society" (St. Petersburg), speaker (report "Informal components of the labor contract of teachers at a regional university")
April 2008- Conference “Constructing the Soviet”, St. Petersburg, speaker, (report “Memories of the Soviet University: Exploitation of Memory”)
November 2007– Slavica-Iberica conference (Lisbon), co-author of the report (report “Portugal” in ru-net”)
November 2007- Seminar “Japanese-Russian cooperation and new rules for export/import transactions in the forestry sector”, speaker (“Corruption in the forestry sector”), expert (Irkutsk)
April 2007– Vectors of development of modern Russia (Moscow), plenary report “Metaphors of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot as a tool for analyzing everyday life in rural Russia”
March 2007– Convention of Independent Sociological Centers, Irkutsk
November 2006– seminar of the Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, speaker “Provincial humanities in post-Soviet Russia”
September 2006 conference “Partnership in Anti-Corruption”, Khabarovsk “Research as a factor in combating corruption”
December 2005– conference “Problems of development of the scientific community”, Tomsk report “Experience in implementing distance learning projects in the sociological sphere”
November 2005“Kandidatskaya workshop”, St. Petersburg, participant
September 2005– international conference “Soviet people in the post-Soviet world”, Irkutsk, report “Survival practices and their discursive reflection”
July 2005– conference “Prospects for Young Humanitarians of Siberia”, Tomsk, report “The Role of Independent Research Organizations”
July 2004– conference “Mapping corruption and anti-corruption in Siberia”, Irkutsk, report “Experience of combining research and social projects”
November 2003– Conference “Civil Society in a Young City”, Ust-Ilimsk, report “Growth Potential in a Young City”
November 2002–conference “Ethnopolitical situation in the Baikal region: monitoring and analysis”, Irkutsk, report “Habitus of Irkutsk politics”
Research projects:
Current projects
Values and norms of the judiciary (supported by EU St. Petersburg), project employee
Judgment Statistics (supported by the C. and J. MacArthur Foundation), Key Investigator
Completed projects
- November 2008 – June 2009 Students of St. Petersburg State University Higher School of Economics, State University Higher School of Economics, Methodological project leader
October – December 2008. Institute of registration in modern Russia. Danish Union of Churches. Expert - May 2008 – July 2008 - First-year students of the St. Petersburg branch of the State University Higher School of Economics, methodological project leader, analyst
- June 2006 – September 2007 – collective project “Problems of Poverty in Post-Soviet Russia” (supported by the Khamovniki Foundation), researcher
- May 2006 – June 2006 – project “Attitude towards corruption in Irkutsk”, analyst (supported by USAID through MSI)
- February 2006 – September 2006 – project “Knowledge against corruption”, expert, teacher (supported by USAID through MSI)
- September 2005 – February 2007 – project “Baikal Siberia: fragments of a sociocultural map”, researcher (supported by the Ford Foundation)
- October 2005 – July 2006 – project “Labor lessons as a mechanism for the reproduction of gender inequality”, head of the research group (supported by CIDA through KFGR)
- April 2005 – August 2005 – project “Informal forest management economy in the Irkutsk region: participants, practices, relationships”, researcher (supported by USAID through MONF)
- November 2004 – June 2005 – project “Internet courses “Qualitative methods in social analysis”, project leader (supported by the Ford Foundation, through ANO “Context”)
- August 2004 – December 2004 - project “Informal forest management economy in the Irkutsk region: sociological analysis”, researcher (supported by USAID through MONF)
- August 2004 – February 2005 – research module of the “New Generation in Science” project, external consultant (supported by the Ford Foundation)
- May 2004 – July 2004 – project “Attitude towards corruption in Irkutsk”, project manager (supported by USAID through MSI)
- March 2004 – November 2004 – project “Anti-corruption in higher education”, sociologist (supported by USAID through MSI)
- May 2003 – May 2004 – project “Russian-Mongolian border: prototype of the Eurasian region?”, researcher (supported by the Ford Foundation)
Why is it necessary to cancel all degrees in sociology awarded after 1991, what is the average length of a scientific article in Russia and why in socio-humanitarian discussions “voicing a position” has replaced arguments, Kirill Titaev told the site in an interview.
The paradox of Russian social sciences (I will speak based on two that I know closely: sociology and law) is that the overwhelming majority of what is presented as these sciences has nothing to do with scientific knowledge at all. These are dissertations that are not scientific, these are articles that are not scientific, these are very often courses that are anti-scientific. And not because there are no such sciences, but because in Russia they have developed this way.
- How will you prove this?
Let's go through examples. In Russia there is a textbook recommended by the UMO “History of Sociology” by Professor Nemirovsky. He tells us that the history of social science is, among other things, the history of various conspiracy theories. “...There is a wide range of sociological theories, which are based on the idea of the development of society as the result of the struggle between “secret” and “overt” forces. … In general, they are united under the term “conspiracy theories”” (p. 78). This is not a random phrase. The professor further states: “Conspiracy theory is a set of sociological theories” (p. 89). All this is discussed over dozens of pages, interspersed with references to books like “Occult secrets of the NKVD and SS” (p. 86).
The problem is not that such books are written and published. I repeat: this is a sociology textbook recommended by the UMO for classical university education, which is taught in a number of universities. And the “professional community” confirms: this is a good textbook.
It would be possible to stop further, but, unfortunately, “on average in a hospital,” as far as I can estimate, is about the same nightmare. If you open the textbooks of Kravchenko and Dobrenkov, there is less outright madness, but the presentation of social theory ends in the 1960s at best. If you look at the methodological textbooks they authored, you will see that all statistics end with two-dimensional distributions. This does not mean that there are no good textbooks. This means that there are a lot of bad ones and, unfortunately, they are widely used.
If you open what we in Russia call scientific articles, then most of the texts cannot be considered either science or research. The average academic sociology paper is five to seven pages long.
Kirill Titaev
Leading researcher at the Institute for Law Enforcement Problems at the European University in St. Petersburg
Let's take the median ten percent (according to the Science Index rating) of Russian sociology journals from the RSCI, and select the journal with the largest number of issues. We will receive the “Bulletin of the University “Turan””. The average number of pages in an article for 2016 is 6.0, the average number of references in the bibliography is 5. Ok, in the ranking of 516 journals, anything can happen.
Let's do the same with the first hundred. Let's get the magazine "Education and Society". Similar indicators - 4.6 pages, 9 links. Let's repeat the same operation for the sphere “State and Law. Legal sciences". In the middle, with a decent number of issues, is the “Legal Bulletin of the Rostov State Economic University.” 6.5 pages, 11 links. Let's look at the first hundred. The most published of the central ten is “Financial Law”. The average number of pages is 4.5, links are 12.
In general, any person who has conducted research, whether empirical or theoretical, understands that nothing can be said in five to seven pages (seven to ten thousand characters). Theses can be presented in such a volume, without any confirmation. If we look at the size of the scientific reference apparatus, we will see that many articles do not have it at all. Not a single link. That is, a person wrote a scientific article in which he did not refer to any work, zero. Even if he relies on five to ten works, it is still negligible. In jurisprudence it is even more difficult, since the bulk of the scientific reference apparatus consists of references to legal acts. There is a massive situation where a person does not refer to anyone at all. Although, we note that in recent years the situation has been improving. When I did similar monitoring five years ago (at that time it was still done manually; there were no modern tools in the RSCI), the situation was much worse.
There is a powerful industry that, unfortunately, captures not only marginal collections and magazines. If it is still possible to somehow live in the core of the RSCI, then outside of it almost everything that is published on sociology and law simply needs to be burned, and all the salaries received by these people can be considered a waste of budget funds.
Kirill Titaev
Leading researcher at the Institute for Law Enforcement Problems at the European University in St. Petersburg
And the entire system of post-Soviet stimulation of science, unfortunately, supports this, because quality was ignored there. A striking example is what is now called reports on government assignments or reports on research projects, through which universities receive a significant portion of their money. Even very good research projects end with the delivery of a “Talmud” of several hundred pages. Regardless of the industry - I have seen it with both astronomers and biologists - no one ever reads these volumes, but people spend up to a fifth of the time they spent researching on them, while ruthlessly falsifying these reports.
It's the same with dissertation advice. Let's look at the example again. There are 47 councils for sociological specialties in Russia. Let's sort them by the date of the creation order, take the central one - at Saratov University, D.212.243.06 - and look at the indicators for the core RSCI of the council members. Chairman - 0 publications, H-index - 0. There is no information about the deputy. Scientific secretary - 1 publications, Hirsch - 0. For council members, the average is: 1.7 publications, 6.2 citations, Hirsch index - 0.3. But this is a rather crafty figure. The fact is that the famous Russian gerontologist Professor Elutina is responsible for almost all indicators. If we exclude it, then the averages become: 0.7 publications, 3.8 citations and Hirsch - 0.15. But only a couple of council members are responsible for these indicators. Median values: 0 publications, 2 citations, Hirsch index - 0.
It cannot be said, however, that this is the fault of specific people.
The key problem is that our “sociologists”, “political scientists”, etc. are people who have never done any science. They were teachers in the departments of scientific communism, Marxist-Leninist philosophy, political economy, and party history. And in the early nineties they were all forced to “repaint” overnight.
Kirill Titaev
Leading researcher at the Institute for Law Enforcement Problems at the European University in St. Petersburg
Historically, the emergence of a science (political science or sociology) out of nowhere from an adjacent pseudoscience brought there the worst features of the past pseudoscience. Our “sociologists” and “philosophers” could no longer write detailed articles in the spirit of scientific communism, and they never really wrote them. They began to write micro-articles in which they broadcast their ideas, rather than their research. Then it intensified very strongly and was reproduced smoothly. People who write like this now... They were taught and educated already in post-Soviet times. This is exactly how they see science, which is terrible.
-Are they honest?
They are usually completely honest. Many of these people, it seems to me, sincerely believe that what they are doing is scientific work. From my observations, in the community there is a boundary between those who write articles and those who do not, but not between those who write good articles and those who write bad ones. For example, in one law department that I researched, there is a normal legal historian who writes good articles. He reads in tongues, and in the languages of the law he writes about. He writes about German law of the Middle Ages, reads in two or three ancient languages, and travels to archives. And from the point of view of the legal community, when you start to figure out where he fits in there, he is a respected member of the community. He writes articles, unlike those who don’t write, and so, they came to teach. But a “scientist” who writes articles of three or four pages, where he expresses his opinion on Russian statehood, but is already a doctor and a professor - the respected historian of law still has time to grow and grow before him: he is just a candidate.
- How did the structure of relationships come about, in which degrees come first?
Very simple. When you have completely dominated organizations, within which there is no criticism, no discussion, but only reporting and obtaining degrees, this is what happens. Mikhail Sokolov wrote about this when he talked about “poor science.” To hold conferences, evaluate the quality of articles, and conduct research, after all, you need resources. But in the 90s there were practically no such resources in socio-humanitarian science. As a result, in addition to very poor starting positions and completely unqualified personnel in their fields, there was added the impossibility of forming a clear alternative. Over the course of a decade and a half, a rut emerged, path dependency, from which there is no way out. And in this situation, scientific recognition comes down to degrees, and scientific research comes down to “expressing one’s own position.” This last thing - replacing the presentation of research with “expressing a position” - is, by the way, the worst thing.
- What do you mean?
I highly recommend listening to scientific conferences of lawyers; they are often posted online. The person stands up and voices a certain position. This phrase - “voice a position” - is key. In general, a speech or publication is an expansion of a certain thesis. The reasons are voiced, and some conclusions are logically drawn from them. This may be supported by some empirical basis, it may be based on pure theoretical-dogmatic logic, but this is a development of a certain thesis. So, in sociology and in law there are negligibly few such texts and speeches. In the overwhelming majority, this is simply the statement of a certain thesis: “depopulation is dangerous for Russia,” “it is necessary to prepare a new Code of Criminal Procedure,” “Carthage must be destroyed.”
A statement without an argument. The appearance of such texts of theses without argument is the most terrible thing that is happening in socio-humanitarian science. In fact, when you hear the words “I just want to voice my position,” this should be punished with dirty rags from any academic structure.
Kirill Titaev
Leading researcher at the Institute for Law Enforcement Problems at the European University in St. Petersburg
I watched an excellent sociological conference here... A discussion on the topic “Is it necessary to socialize children who have gone through the penitentiary system through Orthodox values?” Or socialize children through Islamic-Buddhist values?
- Normal discussion...
These are two positions for now, this is not a debate. And then you expect that there will be an argument, an argument... I respect the idea of socialization through religion, teenagers after prison would be socialized through at least something, and that would be bread! Religiosity is religiosity. But then a discussion arises about “what is closer to a child’s soul.” I am not kidding! “What is spiritually closer to a Russian post-penitentiary teenager?” The crowning argument: “All my experience says that in the Orthodox Church they will even breathe differently!” All! We moved on to anecdotes, but if we speak systematically, then this situation is an exception to discussions based on facts. That is, people have moved on to expressing their positions.
Thanks to the sad track of the 1990s - early 2000s, fact and argument left the mass humanities, socio-economic sciences. Although I do not deny that individual islands remain. If, for example, in theoretical sociology, relatively speaking, I can point my finger at several groups, relatively speaking, and say: “Here people have an argument, they know how to debate in the same language, and there it is more or less clear who won, who lost." In empirical research, in sociology, in political science less so, in jurisprudence - for sure, the argument has simply gone away, it simply does not exist.
People express their opinions, and there is no idea that judgments need to be argued, proven, tested empirically, in the end. And this is the most important thing.
Kirill Titaev
Leading researcher at the Institute for Law Enforcement Problems at the European University in St. Petersburg
I don't understand two things then. Firstly, why does the government pay money for this? Secondly, many departments have adequate scientists working according to a different system of scientific knowledge. Why don’t they unite and start working to build a different system?
Because to do this you have to immediately go against the system. Now the expert council of the Higher Attestation Commission on sociology and philosophy is relatively decent in its sociological part. I don’t know under what pressure these people were driven there, but, in general, it consists of scientists who have written a number of decent books in their lives. If we look at the councils “on the floor below”, we will see that in almost all the councils there are almost no people who have published anything decent. We have already looked at an example.
In such a situation, a small group of individuals working at a decent level should come out and enter into conflict, saying that “your king is naked!” A fellow with a PhD comes out and says to 40 doctors: “You are idiots.” An honest official who sees this has no instrument of discrimination.
Kirill Titaev
Leading researcher at the Institute for Law Enforcement Problems at the European University in St. Petersburg
The already mentioned Mikhail Sokolov wrote about this about 10 years ago. An honest biologist or physicist has 40 doctors and one candidate. And he doesn’t and never will have time to open the texts and see that it’s just nonsense. Accordingly, the result is a more or less closed system that reproduces itself.
And the second reason why no one rebels is this: it is not clear how to solve this situation. Probably just to disperse everyone. And, relatively speaking, prohibit teaching without three publications in the RSCI core in industry journals.
There is always a simple argument against this measure: who will teach? There are thousands of people teaching undergraduate programs around the world who are not scientists, but educators. They once wrote something as a qualification work and did not care about science - they went into teaching. And they must live calmly and teach calmly. Another question is that each department or faculty should have a core - those who are in the mainstream, those who, relatively speaking, make sure that, under the guise of the history of sociology, the “history of conspiracy theories” does not begin to be taught. Don't know. Maybe this should be some kind of metric for the same RSCI core for the department as a whole...
Yes. But if you rely on it, then in an ordinary average provincial town (I am now describing a specific example, but we will do without names) there will be three or four sociologists left. They are ordinary, but completely honest sociologists. They may not write very good articles, but they are sociological articles. You can argue with them; there is a thesis that is confirmed by a conventional argument. They can be allowed to teach sociology to students.
This is variable, I have observed different things. In some cities, local sociologists sit very well in local administrations and serve them with surveys, sometimes not even rigged. I know such cases for sure. And, in general, this is such expert support. This is not the case in other cities. But this is never a serious source of money, maybe for one or two people in the region, no more. Their money does not come from city halls and regional governments.
- Still, the main source of power for this “pseudoscience” is state money?
Yes, Moscow money, ministerial money. State assignment for personnel training and often state assignment for research. And there’s nothing much you can do about it. How are we going to cancel all sociology in the country?! This is impossible. The main problem is that it’s not very easy to chop this tail piece by piece. Because it grows back faster than it can be cut. Gradually, newer and newer requirements are being introduced, which hit the substantive, conscientious scientists. They demanded publications in Scopus, and pseudoscientists found “predatory” journals and closed the indicators. And those who actually work try to squeeze out two meaningful articles a year with an incredible teaching load. Administrative measures of this kind, formal, simply do not work. The tail needs to be cut radically. But no one is ready for this.
Crown: It seems to me that it is important and correct to start with a very simple and understandable educational program about what sociology is in general. Let's clear this fog.
Titaev: If you try to simplify sociology to the limit, then these are probably three things.
Firstly, this is theoretical sociology: a branch of knowledge, in some ways close to philosophy, is the search, creation and development of some theoretical concepts, which then help explain society. For example, education and health - they do not stand alone, but together form human capital. And theoretical sociology is engaged in coming up with such concepts.
In addition, there is empirical academic sociology, which deals with the construction of rather complex models. It usually contains the pathos of improving life: how can we make life a little better? If we invest plus 100 rubles per student in secondary education, will our economy grow or not? And if we start to better finance the judicial system, will this attract investment to us or not? This is done by people at universities or all sorts of think-tanks - purely research organizations that exist in countries that, thank God, have not grown an Academy of Sciences.
And finally, there is a third sociology - this is what people most often imagine when you tell them that you are a sociologist - this is about questionnaires, calculated, VTsIOM reported and so on. In fact, in most of the world they are not considered social scientists. These are the so-called pollsters, from the word poll - “survey”. Today we will talk mainly about them. But first, let's define what a lie is from the point of view of the first two types of sociology.
A lie is a departure from what a person considers to be the subjective truth. What “subjective truth” is, in general, is quite easy to imagine, as long as we are talking about simple empirical events, preferably recent ones. The question “What did you have for lunch today?” suggests a clear answer. But, firstly, you can say that you ate a cutlet with mashed potatoes, but forget about dessert. There can be both conscious and completely unconscious incentives for this. For example, if there was a smoke break between the cutlet and dessert, was it still lunch or not? Even at this level things get complicated.
But most questions that arise in our daily lives do not have a clear empirical referent. Where did you have lunch today, was the food good or not? You can’t really lie in answer to this question, because you can’t tell the truth. Even if we rephrase it as: “Did you like what you ate?” - even here huge difficulties already arise, because “well, I rather liked it, it was better than the day before yesterday, but I’m afraid that it was worse than tomorrow,” and so on and so forth. And we find out that for the sociology of everyday life, the concept of lying is very difficult. And then the most difficult evaluative things begin: “Who do you love more - mom or dad?”
That is why there is such a conventional story that a lie is a situation when a person consciously believes that he is telling a lie or is deliberately not saying anything. This is what so-called lie detectors work on, because when you are not subjectively lying, you don’t have any nervous feelings, and the polygraph won’t show anything.
Kirill Titaev - leading researcher at the Institute of Law Enforcement Problems at the European University in St. Petersburg
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Crown: And for survey sociology, for third sociology, lies become some kind of completely applied history?
Titaev: Absolutely. What is survey sociology? This is a situation when we poke our respondent with some kind of questionnaire and wait for him to choose one or another option. And here a huge number of technical difficulties arise, because precisely for survey sociology, truth is some correspondence with the empirical reality that was yesterday, is today or will be tomorrow. “Who will you vote for? Who would you vote for? How many kilograms of sausages did you buy during the last week?
Crown: It turns out that a lie is a mistake when a person says something different from what he did. And in this case, the question arises: is it even possible to trust polls?
Titaev: We will begin with this example to analyze several standard difficulties that arise among users and organizers of “sociological” surveys. So, first: do you trust?
What does “trust” mean? For example, do I trust the organizers of this event? Of course, I will say that yes, but what will stand behind my “trust”? This means that I expect that train tickets will be sent to me, that people will come here at the appointed time, that there will be a presenter and that something will basically happen. That is, I expect that promises will be fulfilled one way or another.
Do I trust the president and the government? In this case, trust will be in default: you are asked about it on the street or on the phone - and you assume that they are more likely to be good than bad. This is a completely different trust. Do you trust the bank - this is the third trust.
So, the first huge problem is the discrepancy between the meanings, the semantic halo of words in everyday language in different contexts. Our trust is a lot of different trusts, depending on what we are talking about. If a person receives a pension, then the key story about trust in authorities is the story of whether he regularly receives his pension. And for a person who lives his own life and does not even see the president on TV, the story about trust is the so-called generalized respect: in general, I will talk about these bodies better than bad.
The second important story is the relevance of experience. If I ask everyone present here whether you are satisfied with the quality of the Moscow metro, this will be a relevant question. My guess is that more than half have fairly regular experience of using the subway. Unfortunately, very often survey sociology is forced to work with experience that is not entirely relevant. When we start asking about trust in the police and courts, we find ourselves in the realm of irrelevant experience. Do you trust the licensing service, which worked as part of the police, and has now become part of the Russian Guard?
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Thirdly, we must also understand that a survey is an interviewer in a race situation; his salary directly depends on how quickly he receives answers to all the necessary questions. In methodological experiments, we see that approximately 30% of respondents have no problem speaking out about non-existent realities. For example, about 25% of respondents calmly express their opinion about the work of the Federal Service for the Control of Stray Animals. There has never been such a service, but consistently 20 to 30% of respondents have an opinion about the quality of its work.
Fourthly, there is another story about our cognitive characteristics. It is convenient for us to forget about unpleasant situations. A simple example: after Yeltsin’s victory in the 1996 presidential election and before the 1998 crisis, according to polls, the share of those voting for Yeltsin grew steadily by about 1% per month. That is, approximately 1% per month convinced themselves that they voted for Yeltsin. It's nice to be with a winner, especially when the country is seeing some improvement. From 1998 until now, the share of those who voted for Yeltsin in 1996 has fallen by about 1% every six months. That is, in 1996, according to various survey data, from 17 to 23% voted for Yeltsin. And the proportion of those who do not remember who they voted for is growing, which is understandable.
I myself was sincerely surprised to discover that in the 2003 Duma elections I voted for the Yabloko party, because I found a photo of myself at home with a proud sticker “I voted for Yabloko.” And I was terribly surprised. Why did you go to these elections, idiot? I was firmly convinced that I did not go to them.
Crown: So, there are honest polls and dishonest ones?
Titaev: Not certainly in that way. There is dishonesty in polls at the level of simple falsification. What does it mean? There are situations when no survey is conducted, but good people just took a stack of questionnaires and sat down in a convenient place. On average, using a standard questionnaire, in one working day, three people fill out 500–600 questionnaires with a normal level of quality. There are more advanced technologies when we simply write a small script that immediately puts numbers into an array - into a table. And there are absolutely barbarians who draw numbers without creating arrays. But we won’t talk about them; I would also suggest leaving aside stories about deliberate falsification. This lie is technologically easy to detect, and no normal customer will work with it.
Crown: How is it detected?
Titaev: There are many simple algorithms there. I don't think it makes sense to go into this now, without a board and slides. There are special companies that falsify arrays at a very good level. But having an array, stacks of paper questionnaires or recordings of telephone conversations, I probably need about 20 minutes to say with confidence whether there was a survey or not.
Even the Ministry of Science and Education of the Republic of Ingushetia copies the columns of sociologist Kirill Titaev in Vedomosti onto its website. His areas of interest are education, the effectiveness of the police, investigative agencies and the judicial system.
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Titaev: In the vast majority of cases in Russia, interviews have long been conducted via mobile phones. There are bases of the Big Three - Megafon, Beeline, MTS - and they, of course, make a selection of mobile phones. In this regard, Russia is among the leaders, because our availability of mobile phones is approaching 100% and inboxes are free almost everywhere, people are not afraid to pick up a phone.
Crown: Is there any condition that the survey requires asking an equal number of completely different people? 10 young couples, 10 middle class people, 10 lower class people, 10 pensioners and 10 TV stars.
Titaev: Typically, gender and age quotas are used; in good surveys, education quotas are used. But with a normally composed sample, we already get normal results.
Crown: Let’s imagine this situation: I’m a businessman, I receive opinion poll data that people like cherries, which means I’ll make cherry cola. Is this how it usually happens?
Titaev: There are a large number of studies (I participated in several of them) where a manufacturer of something, such as sausage, asks how much of his brand of sausage the region consumed in the previous week. He, accordingly, knows this to the nearest kilogram. I check using survey methods, and my deviation is well within the sampling error, within 2–3%. Things that relate to simple recent practical actions give a very good extrapolation. When we say: now, due to the crisis, the consumption model is changing in such and such a way - almost all companies, almost all retail, focusing on this, change their assortment, and they do not have warehouse surpluses.
Crown: That is, if I see information about sausage, cigarettes, cars, the Troika card or something else everyday, then should I trust it?
Titaev: Yes. If a business survey reports that last year's margin is such and such, it is likely to be trusted because the businessman knows what his margin is and is unlikely to forget it in a year. When I say that the average thickness of a criminal case submitted by a Russian investigator to court is 120–150 pages, they estimate that this is a very accurate data, because this is what he encounters every day and where he does not have any motive consciously lie, he was asked about a simple, everyday thing for him.
Cases about trust, assessments, respect, and future voting are a completely different matter. We know that, for example, in American data, love for the president is most strongly determined by the weather.
Here and now, trust in power can be good, especially when we are told this every day on TV. This is the expected regulatory response. But these things can jump at incredible speeds. If you look at indices, trust ratings and so on, you will see that they fluctuate quite a lot - maybe 20-30% per year. Therefore, when they start telling you about trust, attitude, assessments, you need to trust this with very great caution.
For example, there is an index of generalized trust. What it is? These are approximately 30 questions that mainly rely on the so-called vignette method. These are imaginary situations where you are asked about behavior. For example, I ask you a question in a cafe near the metro: over the last three months, have you at least once left your bag, phone or wallet at a table, being the only person in the cafe, to go outside to smoke?
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Crown: My answer is yes.
Titaev: There are many similarly constructed questions, they show the level of trust in the world. In Russia, for example, approximately 50% of smokers who go to cafes have had such experience. In a standard Western European country, 90% of smokers who go to cafes have had this experience. And it’s things like this that allow us to understand very large social differences across countries. In Russia, the index of generalized trust, thank God, is growing steadily, despite the crisis, that is, we trust each other more and more. More and more often we commit actions that demonstrate that, in general, we consider those around us rather than thieves, murderers, or criminals.
Let's create a trust rating in two simple ways. How much do you trust the government (the court, the police, the devil in the mortar), and then four points: I completely trust, rather trust, rather distrust, completely distrust. Everything is very simple, imagine it. If we take the “fully trust” option and only that, we will have a president with 82%, and at the bottom will be the courts, with 10%, if we add up... and we will have a huge gap. And if we sum up “completely” and “most likely”, then at the top we will have the president, who will add 4 or 5%, and at the bottom there will be the courts, but not with 10, but with 50%.
Crown: What does this tell us?
T. In one case we say: guys, you understand that our president is trusted 9 times more than the courts, and in another case - 2 times. Because the distribution in this pair - “I completely trust” and “I rather trust” - is very heterogeneous for different categories. Everyone completely trusts the president, but everyone “rather trusts” the police. And we can imagine the police as a body that no one completely trusts, and this will be one image, one picture, or we can imagine the police, which, after all, more than half of the population rather trusts.
Crown: It's all a question of presentation.
Titaev: You must take the time to look at how the questionnaire is formulated and ignore anything that is not relevant. Let's look at a simple example. When in our survey 87% of the population had some attitude towards the activities of the police, we understand that this is a mess. Because we know that according to reports, the police receive 28 million calls a year, but in reality it is slightly less. Given that a large proportion of the calls are from unquestioned marginalized classes, only approximately 20% of the population actually had contact with the police.
Crown: It turns out that by asking a question about experience and what happened in the past, we are more likely to get real and truthful answers than if we imagine what will happen to it (what item will you buy, what will you wear tomorrow, who will you vote for tomorrow )?
Titaev: And in the same way, you cannot ask about what a person is thinking about: how you feel, who you trust, what you think about... In surveys you can only ask about what happened to the person.
Crown: Let me imagine this situation: I see some result in the newspaper, on the radio, on the Internet. Is there any way to understand how true this result is?
Titaev: Yes, I could probably offer some kind of checklist, very simple, which I recommend, for example, to all journalists. If we are talking about a situation where the general population is the entire population, first: could this question be asked to me? Could I respond easily, quickly and thoughtfully? If the first two answers are yes, then we move on to the technical details. We look to see if the answers are reasonably priced. They must be symmetrical, there must be the same number of positive and negative ones. They must go in a logical sequence.
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Crown: I do not get you. Can you explain please.
Titaev: Did you like today's lecture? - yes, rather yes, no. We shifted the answers towards the positive and offered two positive and one negative. This gives us approximately plus 5% to positive responses.
Crown: It turns out that if in our graph there are two good options, two bad options and one in between...
Titaev: Yes, that means everything is fine.
Crown: Summarizing. At first we talked about not being trusted, but in the end we came to the conclusion that something can still be trusted and opinion polls are quite a working tool both for understanding and for those people who need them.
Titaev: Paradoxically, yes.
Crown: How are things predicted based on surveys of past experiences?
Titaev: We can predict that moving away from meat consumption will cause an increase in the consumption of semi-finished products, that is, dumplings will be sold more. We know that the greater the increase in family investment in children's education, the more bribes they give at military registration and enlistment offices. But it’s difficult to make a prediction based on one thing. When we have several surveys and we have read something, we work like little merlins. But as soon as big things start about relationships, thoughts, feelings, and so on, it all becomes pure fantasy.
Crown: Is there any good survey about attitudes, thoughts and feelings?
Titaev: They usually joke about this that the main misfortune of modern sociology is that since the end of the 19th century, torture instruments have been excluded from sociology. So probably not.
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5 best questions from the audience
Is it true that in-depth focus groups, where sociologists interview ordinary people in the regions over a cup of tea, work much better than well-designed quantitative surveys?
Titaev: Firstly, a deep focus group is the same focus group, only added with the word “deep”. And focused interviews, in-depth interviews, keynote interviews are more or less the same thing. It’s just that as the author of a particular textbook liked it, that’s what he called it.
I am a categorical opponent of contrasting qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative methods include interviews and focus groups. Quantitative - surveys. These are great complementary things. Sometimes they work separately. Because you can write a questionnaire about how people eat sausage without an interview, although it works better with an interview. Writing a questionnaire about the professional everyday life of a judge or a Moscow journalist is much more difficult, and, in fact, it would be better to first figure out how it all works there.
Here's a good example. There was a situation when all the survey factories before the winter of 2011 said that everything was fine with us. And then Mikhail Dmitriev came out with a group at the Center for Strategic Research and published a report saying that everything here is much worse, and there will be an explosion. And the explosion happened. Not quite like that, not quite there, but he was the only one who clearly predicted all this 3-4 months in advance.
Dmitriev's group practically did not work with quantitative surveys. They conducted focus groups in the regions, a lot of them. Focus groups in general are when a sample (that is, not just anyone) of 5–15 people sit at a table and a sociologist talks to them in detail for an hour, two, three. I had a record nine-hour focus group. I thought I was going to die.
All focus group participants sit in the same room. Because, unlike an individual conversation, we see the stability of opinions. Because I tell you that the English greyhound is the best breed in the world, and you tell me that it is not, that it is absolutely terrible, and then we need to see which of us will give up faster. This allows you to see how stable these opinions are. The main advantage of a focus group is that we immediately see for whom an opinion is simply blurted out without any arguments, and who easily convinces others. We see the comparative strength of the position in the debate. And my task as a moderator, a sociologist as a moderator, is to force people to convince each other, to argue among themselves. Sometimes a decoy is planted, the so-called facilitator, who brings them into conflict. And then they fight among themselves.
Here's an example: Are GMOs bad or good? In focus groups, we see that GMO opponents defeat GMO supporters in a minute and a half. And we understand that it works. Although according to polls we have a 50/50 split between those who don’t care and those who care. Once a discussion arises, we understand that there is this trend, we see that in all focus groups across the country in a simulated situation, opponents of GMOs successfully convince neutrals. This means it will be the same in dachas, kitchens, and so on. This means that all products need to be labeled “non-GMO”, because today this is not very important, but tomorrow it will become a powerful marketing tool.
That is, based on the focus group, we see that this person can be convinced, but here it is not, he is bursting like a Zhikharka and says no. Convincing a person that the president is good is quite easy in a focus group. It’s not possible to convince people who have gone to Russian magistrates’ courts that this is a comfortable place.
As for the geography of the surveys, we are firmly convinced that there are three regions that have nothing to do with Russia and there is no point in studying them. These are Moscow, St. Petersburg and Chechnya.
Is it correct to ask a question about attitudes towards other nationalities and countries?
Titaev: This is a worldwide problem. And the fact that pollsters ask about things that, in general, should not be asked about (like the same trust, sympathy), and how the media then deal with this. For example, the gypsies: on average, no one sees the gypsies in the country, then there is a shootout in Sagra, the numbers soar, 60% of the population appears who hate the gypsies for these two weeks and then forget about them. The normal situation after an information surge is to remove the issue for a while
I’ll say something about the media. I feel like the culture of working with survey data has grown a lot. That is, when we talk about serious publications - about Vedomosti, about RBC - it seems that they assigned a special fact checker to this case, who checks that everything is okay with these polls. Because I don’t remember their fatally inadequate interpretations. Well, how Levada or FOM Moskovsky Komsomolets will retell it is scary to even imagine.
Does the interview influence the interviewee? Is it possible to introduce a certain idea to the masses or make them think about something?
Titaev: For the masses - no. Because conducting an interview with one percent of the population is the entire budget of the Russian Federation. But there are motivating surveys, this is a mass promotion technology, especially in politics.
- Please give an example.
Titaev: Let me sell you something now. Tell me, do you know that Sberbank of Russia has launched a new line of free loans?
- No.
Titaev: If you were offered a free loan from Sberbank, which would allow you to manage funds for a month without paying any interest, would you agree to it?
- After the word “free” I already forgot what happened next.
Titaev: At one time in the Irkutsk region there was such a slogan - “Yuri Ten is building a bridge.” This was a local politician who, in particular, promoted the fact that a bridge was being gradually built across the Angara. And he had wonderful survey things: “Do you know who Yuri Ten is? What bridge is Yuri Ten building?” - "No, I do not know". - “Yuri Ten is organizing the construction of a bridge across the Angara. Do you know that he will allow…” That is, disguising PR as a survey is a nice thing, it’s done en masse, always and everywhere. Half of the marketing surveys that a bank, MTS or anyone else offers you are more about sales than about collecting information.
Is there any evidence about truth and untruth in matters involving difficult moral decisions about whether to tell the truth or not? When it comes to domestic violence, for example. And a person, even despite anonymity, must decide for himself whether to answer truthfully or not.
Titaev: There are so-called sensitive issues. They start with a question about income and age. Now I will show myself as a terrible sexist, but I will be protected by the fact that this is real data. According to the pension fund, we have consistently 15–20% more women of retirement age who receive an old-age pension than according to the census. That is, at a certain point the question of age becomes sensitive. And the question of income is already very sensitive: in Russia, survey income is much lower than what we see even at Rosstat. And in America, for example, survey incomes are significantly higher than those we see on the American Census Bureau.
When we talk about really sensitive issues - intimate experience, the experience of a criminal - then a nightmare begins here. There are certain techniques, there are certain institutions that say that they are gradually learning to ask such questions. Personally, I don’t trust them and haven’t seen good results.
A simple example. There is such a thing as victimization surveys, the main purpose of which is to identify the number of people who actually were victims of crime and did not go to the police. You understand that people don’t talk about this, but even so, the number of crime victims is at least twice as different from the number of victims according to police statistics. We understand that in fact there are not twice as many of them, but three, four, five. And for certain types of crimes - domestic violence, marital rape, such terrible things - there is a difference tenfold. But even here we see this difference. And for some stubborn representatives of law enforcement agencies, this is already becoming some kind of argument.
Are there unethical, taboo research topics for sociologists?
Titaev: In Russia, nothing is forbidden when it is not associated with violence and outright crime. That is, if you did not beat your informants or customers, then everything is possible. Another question is that not everything is decent to sign for. That is, when they come to you and say: “Make us a questionnaire that will give such and such results.” Most sociologists will do such a questionnaire, it seems to me. But the vast majority will prohibit their names from being mentioned in connection with this project. Because otherwise, my colleagues will ask the question: my friend, are you a fool or have you sold out?
And this is, first of all, a story about methodological correctness, because publishing clearly skewed results under your own name is something that not everyone is ready for. And there, of course, there are much more fools than they sold out, because a lot of people do it completely sincerely. Moreover, this market somehow functions: a normal situation is when a person simultaneously does research ordered by the so-called State Department and the so-called FSB. Just a couple of years ago, I observed a man who won tenders from one federal law enforcement agency and, at the same time, quite calmly won tenders from organizations that are now considered “anti-Russian” in our country. Both of them knew that he worked here and there, and for both, and this did not bother anyone.