Penza, 17 April 2017. PenzaNews. About 14% of Internet-users are ready to take part in mass corruption protests against corruption if they are invited to do so through social networks. Such are the results of the poll conducted on the PenzaNews website during April 3-16, 2017. 362 Internet users, including 312 – from Penza and the Penza region, took part in it.

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It turned out that less than 9% of the respondents are ready to plunge into street protest activity but still have some doubts.

Answering to the question about the willingness to take part in a mass protest against corruption most of Internet users – over 55% - selected the option "Definitely no". Over 18% of people chose the answer "Rather not".

4% of the online poll participants remained undecided.

As it was reported earlier, less than a month ago, on March 26, people gathered in the centre of Penza in order to support the demand to investigate facts of top Russian officials’ corruption. According to various estimates, the rally was attended by 300-400 people. The organizer of the event endorsed by the regional government was the Penza youth civil organization "Modern Age Generation".

After the rally, which went off peacefully and without arrests, some representatives of the Penza community said that the authorities had not expected that so many people would take part in the rally in order to express their discontent about corruption. According to them, this fact could cause a sudden resignation of the head of the internal policy department of the Penza region government Alexander Yelatontsev on March 29.

At the same time, a number of experts commenting on the official's resignation reminded that a day before the Federal Security Service together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs stopped the activities of the international terrorist organization "Party of Liberation" (Hizb ut-Tahrir) forbidden in Russia as a result of the event held in the territory of the Moscow and Penza regions.

According to them, this is a more serious reason for the resignation of the official responsible for the internal policy in one of the calmest regions of Russia.

According to analysts, if compared to similar protest rallies held on March 26 in other cities of the country, it is not extraordinary that several hundreds of citizens took part in a rally endorsed by the Penza authorities taking into account that the population of the city is over half a million people.