Today’s Russians say things have changed quite a bit since the old days of the Soviet Union.  But they say things haven’t necessarily changed for the better.

The independent pollster Levada Center asked folks if the residents of today’s Russia are different from people who lived in the Soviet Union:  74 percent of respondents said they are completely or in many respects different.  But out of that group, 58 percent said people have become more calculating and colder toward one another, 35 percent said people have grown intolerant, 30 percent said people are poorer.

And only 29 percent called modern Russians more free than their Soviet forefathers.

Twenty-six percent said the authorities have established normal relations with the West, only eight percent said they have put things right in the country, and a slim four percent said the current authorities have started thinking about ordinary people.