MOSCOW, January 16, 2007 Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) presents information how Russians treat the decision of the authorities in respect of introducing long New Year and Christmas holidays and what plans respondents have for these vacations.

Every second Russian (47%) considers introducing long holidays in January to be a good decision taken by the authorities. Another 22% characterize the decision as positive on the whole, but with a reservation that it could be better to introduce holidays not in January but over the May holidays. One fifth of respondents oppose the decision to introduce long holidays as such.

The share of respondents who like having a holiday in January has grown over the last two years from 41% up to 47%, the share of those who only partially approves of the holidays was reduced at the same time (from 27% down to 22%), as well as the number of those who discuss this innovation (from 23% down to 19%).

The higher the respondents estimate their own financial standing, the more positively they treat the innovation. Thus, two thirds (67%) of respondents with high estimation of own financial standing definitely approve of vacations in January, among respondents with average estimation of the same factor only a half treats the new holidays positively (48%), whereas in the group of respondents with relatively low estimation of own financial standing, no more than one third of respondents approves of the new vacations.

Russians´ favourite pastime during the winter vacations is to make visits: 52% of respondents mentioned plans like that on New Year Eve. 24% pointed out that they like spending time walking in the open air. 12-14% of respondents were planning to go skating, skiing, tobogganing, as well as go to performances, New Year performances or to the cinema with the children. 9-10% for each option spoke of having planned to go to a restaurant, club, disco; to the theatre, a concert, to the movies; leave the city for the country house. The group of respondents planning to spend the holidays in a holiday cottage or a resort in Russia, or go abroad was not too numerous. One forth of respondents (26%) was not going to do anything in particular, but only planned to spend all the holidays at home. 11% indicated that they were going to work during the vacations.

The way that Russians spend their holidays is becoming more and more varied: the share of those eager to spend their vacations at home has reduced within the past two years (from 35% down to 26%), as well as the portion of those who were planning to work all through the holidays, did (from 16% down to 11%).

Winter leisure activities of people with high estimation of own financial standing looks the most interesting and varied (at least judging by their plans). This does not only concern "expensive" types of leisure activities, such as going to restaurants, clubs or discos (the share of those who indicated plans like that decreases from 24% in the group with high estimation of own financial standing down to 4% in the group with low estimation of the same factor), but also touches upon more economical ones, e.g. spending time walking in the open air (34% and 18%). As for sitting at home all through the holidays, no more than 9% of respondents with high estimation of own financial standing stated their plans to do so, whereas 24% of respondents with average level of financial standing did so, and nearly half (43%) of respondents with low financial standing were going to spend all the holidays at home.

The initiative all-Russia opinion poll was conducted by VCIOM on December 22-23, 2007. 1600 respondents were interviewed in 153 population areas of 46 regions of Russia. The statistical error does not exceed 3.4%.