HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Beginning of a year is the time when sociologists and not only them are sizing up the results of the past year. This is a usual routine work since the time frame when 'Januaries replace Decembers' is purely symbolic. It doesn't matter whether we talk about life of a particular man or about future of a society within state boundaries...

UNOBSERVED JUBILEE
Ten Days That Shook the World by US writer J. Reed was a very popular book under Soviets. The writer presented in it his version of October takeover. Since nothing is eternal, the takeover was soon given the name of the Great October Socialist Revolution. The history did a full turn for 75 years and it has again become fashionable to call the revolution a turnover. Mysterious are the ways of revolution...

YET THE TENDENCY
“The election into the 25^th Local Councils of Deputies has taken place!” We deliberately put this sentence into inverted commas. This is a quote from the article “Local Councils have been formed” published in Sovetskaya Belorussia of January 16. Let’s quote it on: “All the concerns about activity of voters cleared away on the voting day when the first preliminary results just started coming from polling stations. The final data was announced yesterday – 78.7%! Can anyone say after this that the Local Election is of little importance?"...

REGARDING COLLECTIVE CAPITAL
The year 2006 in Belarus was lived under the guise of stability; at least the authorities took great efforts to make it look alike. The presidential election brought certain dynamism yet it was not for long. Response of the authorities to this dynamism was at all inadequate. The state of Belarusian economics before the election and consequently the social tenseness didn't give any cause for anxiety. Socio-economic indicators of 2006 were beyond any comparison with the appropriate indicators of 2001...

OIL & GAS WAR: "TIE IN THE BATTLE"
Any outsider watching January newsreels on the Belarusian TV would definitely decide that there was unscheduled presidential election or at least another crucial referendum announced in the country. Informational activity of the head of state was a safe indicator of this. It is due to this activity that a row between Belarusian economic entities and their Russian partners turned into gas and oil war between the two states...

INTEGRATION BREAKTHROUGH
Public opinion is pretty pliant especially when it trusts the information source. As of now, it still does. The rating of trust to A. Lukashenko (country’s chief political informant) has dropped by 4.9 points as compared to November of 2006 but it still remains unattainable (55.4%)...

SOCIAL INTERFERENCE
As they say, we learn wisdom by the follies of others. This applies to the Belarusians as well. Inflation of early 90-ies is still alive in people’s memory, and so when the lords of the Union State started bickering, their villains without going into details of who was right fled to exchange offices to purchase hard currency. Such financial activity of population affects currency rates. During the January opinion poll sociologists registered a turn in currency preferences of Belarusians...

WHAT ECONOMICS DO BELARUSIANS NEED?
If we analyze answers of respondents for the past ten years to the question about the economics model they prefer, we will see surprising stability of the market economy supporters. As poll data shows, about two thirds of adult population preferred the market economy during all this period...

MAJORITY IS AGAINST "CONTRACTUAL SYSTEM FOR WHOLE COUNTRY"
In accordance with poll data, today two out of five voters stand against mass conversion of private sector employees to short-term labor contracts actively practiced over lately. Although the population is gradually adapting to the "contractual system for the whole country", zeal officials ready to beat the bushes have taken the situation to absurd. Contracts may be signed for the term of six months or even shorter. Of course, this cannot have mass support and only every fifth respondent approves the contractual system...

WINNERS AND LOSERS
State independence is quite an intricate thing. It’s hard to understand for population whether they benefited or lost from it. Therefore, the public opinion divided into three and not into two groups when answering to the direct question about personal benefit/loss - about a third of respondents (31.6%) found it difficult to answer this question. However, the group of winners from Belarusian independence is larger than the group of losers (38.1% vs. 29.4%). This really encourages...

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