U.S.-Soviet Poll Finds Positive Feelings
A majority of American and Soviet citizens have positive feelings about each other but remain wary of each other’s governments, a poll released Saturday showed.
The poll, commissioned by Newsweek magazine and the Soviet press agency Novosti, showed that 81% of the Soviet respondents have a friendly attitude toward Americans and that 63% of Americans feel friendly toward the Soviets.
But the poll also showed that 58% of the Soviets questioned said they have negative feelings toward the U.S. government and that 75% of the American respondents have negative feelings toward the Kremlin.
The newsmagazine said the poll was the “first ever . . . conducted simultaneously and posing identical questions to citizens of both the United States and the Soviet Union.”
Newsweek and Novosti commissioned the poll on the eve of a superpower summit between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Washington.
The Gallup Organization handled polling in the United States, while the Institute for Sociological Research for the Academy of Sciences did the polling in the Soviet Union.
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