Rev.] On book publication: Popov N.P. Rossiya — Amerika: “Pryamaya svyaz”. Vospominaniya Amerikanista i Sovetologa. [Russia — America: “Direct Connection”: Memoirs of an Americanist and Sovietologist.] Moscow: KnigIzdat publ., 2020

Abstract

The book is constructed in the form of an interview of the famous Soviet/Russian sociologist and americanist doctor of sciences N.P. Popov with doctor of sciences B.Z. Doktorov, who developed the genre of scientific memoirs and conducted over a hundred interviews with Russian and American sociologists. The paper covers three main topics. Like any biography, this is a personal story of the author — his youth in the post-war years, the path to the profession of a journalist and sociologist, the worldview of the “sixties”. Journalism leads the author, as well as many American pollsters, to the study of public opinion, at first American, continued at the Institute of US and Canadian Studies. He like no other is closely acquainted with the work of leading American pollsters: George Gallup, Louis Harris, Warren Mitofsky, Mervin Field and other gurus. The study of American polling technology and public opinion on socio-political problems and electoral orientations of the population were used by the author in further work at Soviet and Russian centers for the study of public opinion, first of all – at the All-Union center for the study of public opinion (VTSIOM), created in 1988, where he was offered a job by Tatyana Zaslavskaya and Boris Grushin. They also recommended him later as head of the sociological department of the presidential administration right before the 1996 election. The book includes a number of articles by the author on Russian and American public opinion in different years.