The results of the poll on how the Serbian citizens see the transition from socialism to capitalism show that a total of 81 percent of citizens believe that living conditions were best at the time of socialism, and the biggest trust in social institutions was at the time of Josip Broz Tito's rule.

In terms of the standard of living, the time of Tito's rule from the Second World War to the 1980s was assessed as best, whereas the period of Slobodan Milosevic (the 1990s) and the present time are seen as more or less the same.

The citizens had the greatest trust in social institutions at the time of Tito's rule (45 percent), at the time of Zoran Djindjic from 2001-2003 (23 percent), whereas presently only 19 percent of citizens places trust in them.

According to the poll coordinator Srecko Mihailovic, what seems to be the worst is that as much as 23 percent of respondents think that Serbia is governed by criminals, 18 percent of them believe that the country is run by the president, the government and the parliament, the same percentage believe that the country is run by owners of large companies, and 12 percent believe that Serbia is ruled by the international community.

By saying that life was better in socialism than it is now, the Serbian citizens primarily refer to better economic situation and standard of living, but the majority of them would not go back to that period.

Mihailovic said that similar results were obtained in other post-communist countries, as well as in some post-dictatorship regimes, adding that there are various reasons for this.

Presenting the results of the poll at the conference on the twenty years of transition from socialism to capitalism, President of the Democratic Party Political Council Dragoljub Micunovic stated that the transition process in Serbia began suddenly and was not properly organized.

He stressed that society in Serbia proved to be unstructured and backward and could not carry the burden of change.

The poll was conducted by the Center for Social Democratic Studies (CSSD), Friedrich Ebert Stiftung foundation and Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CeSID) in September and it included 1,813 respondents.