TIMES MIRROR SURVEY : Russians Like Gorbachev, Prefer Yeltsin, Poll Finds

Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s popularity in Russia has rebounded sharply from low levels after the failure of the hard-liners’ coup against him, but Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin and the Russian Parliament were seen by the people as better able to solve the nation’s problems, according to an extensive Times Mirror survey released today.

Favorable opinions of Gorbachev were held by 56% of Russians early this month, shortly after the coup failed, compared to 30% only four months earlier, the survey found. Yeltsin’s job approval rating rose to 78% from 55% in the same period, and half of the Russians polled said their political views are close to Yeltsin’s.

The numbers document a crucial balance of strength between the two leaders as they cooperate and vie with each other in the creation of a new government. Gorbachev’s remarkable emergence from the political abyss won him crucial public support, the poll found, but Yeltsin’s heroic effort in resisting the coup brought deeper public trust and confidence.

The poll of 1,035 Russians this month completed a comprehensive survey of political values in Europe conducted by the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press. The effort tapped opinions and attitudes in 12 nations across the Continent, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains, as the Cold War ends and the economic integration of Western Europe approaches.

“The survey is believed to be the first comparative study of its kind across the breadth of the Continent,” center Director Donald S. Kellermann said.

The post-coup survey of sentiments within the Russian Federation, which extended and elaborated on a Times Mirror poll in May of all of Europe, also found that:

* The commitment to democracy remains fragile in Russia. Despite the attempted putsch, the proportion of Russians committed to democracy remained essentially unchanged at about half, while about a third of the people still desire a “strong leader” who would take charge.

* Although their empire appears doomed, most Russians want to remain part of some larger new nation rather than become totally independent. And a majority would “require” their brother Slavs in the Ukraine and Byelorussia to become part of the new nation or become economically “bound” to them.

* But Russians appear allergic to nuclear weapons, the ultimate symbol of superpower status, and do not even want responsibility for the former Soviet army. Most said they prefer that nuclear arms and military units remain under a central command rather than come under exclusively Russian control.

The September results confirmed the May survey findings and strengthened the view that the basic attitudes of Russians, as well as those of other former Soviet Bloc peoples, show remarkable resistance to change despite the political and economic revolutions.

The September survey was limited to residents of Moscow and Leningrad, which will revert to its pre-Soviet name of St. Petersburg on Oct. 1. The more extensive May survey was based on hourlong personal interviews of more than 13,000 people in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia, the Ukraine and Lithuania. In all, more than 1.5 million questions were asked in the poll.

Results of the survey indicate that the two halves of Europe are pulling in opposite directions. And the potential for new upheaval and violence in East Europe, Russia and the Ukraine appears ominous.

Ethnic hatreds from the region’s conflict-ridden past appear to have resurfaced with a vengeance. Freed of Communist suppression of their views, two out of five citizens of every East European nation surveyed say they overtly dislike the primary ethnic minority in their country. Overwhelming majorities in every country believe that the recent political and economic revolutions have worsened inter-ethnic tensions.

Cross-border clashes, as well as internal conflicts like the continuing upheaval in Yugoslavia, seem almost inevitable. Besides not liking their neighbors, majorities in most nations believe that parts of adjacent countries really belong to them. In the most extreme finding, two out of three Hungarians and Poles covet surrounding foreign territory.

All of these peoples are skeptical about their continuing experiments with democracy and free-market economies, dubious of their present political leadership and distrustful of the key social institutions that make up a “civil society.”

The failure to achieve economic miracles in short order is being increasingly blamed on the democratic process, while at the same time, the lure of the authoritarian’s “strong hand,” as a short cut to economic prosperity, is discernible.

Even more ominously, about one in five survey respondents who reside “in the Jewish killing fields of Europe, from Germany eastward,” expressed anti-Semitic beliefs, said the survey report. Hostility was highest in Poland and Slovakia, despite almost no Jewish presence in those regions today. And “no opinion” responses ran as high as 30% on this issue, suggesting that considerable greater anti-Semitic levels may have been masked.

West European citizens, the survey found, are also riven by racial prejudice and express determination to safeguard their borders against new immigrants even as old emigration barriers are falling. German dislike of Poles, for example, and French distaste for North African Arabs are every bit as hostile as East European views of the minorities there, the poll found.

Americans, by comparison, are significantly less altruistic but feel far more in charge of their lives than do West or East Europeans, the pollsters reported.

Almost 30% of Americans do not believe that governments must take care of the very poor, at least three times higher than the percentage of Europeans holding that view. But Americans feel significantly more empowered by their votes and more convinced that hard work brings success.

The September poll inside Russia also found a dramatic rise in the fear of civil strife since the abortive coup, with citizens of the restive federation clearly more uncertain about their future. Thirty percent said their greatest worry is civil war, while 11% cited armed conflict between republics. In May, the pollsters found that the prospect of such violence worried considerably fewer citizens.

Russians did not appear to be elated over their success in facing down the coup. They rated their lives in September as poor as--or poorer than--they did in May, for example, and they were more pessimistic, if anything, about their future than four months earlier.

Russian backing of Yeltsin, although high, was not unlimited. Asked whether the Russian Parliament should be suspended to allow Yeltsin to solve problems without interference, more than half said no, and one in four said yes. The rest, about one in five, said “don’t know.”

Most striking, however, was the reluctance of Russians to give up the past control of the other republics.

Fully 50% said the neighboring Slavic peoples in Byelorussia and the Ukraine “should be required to become part of the new nation,” while 34% would allow their cousins to become independent.