MOSCOW, Oct 23 (Reuters) - As the financial crisis bears down on Russia, its voters say they would welcome greater state involvement, including price controls and nationalisation of banks and firms owned by mistrusted tycoons, a poll showed on Thursday.
Russia, whose economy depends on the export of oil, gas and metals, is still among the world's fastest-growing economies. But many of its citizens have started feeling the knock-on effects of the global crisis and are tightening their belts to prepare for the worst.
Some 79 percent of those polled said they would hail state regulation of prices, while only 13 percent said they would not support such an anti-crisis measure, according to the All-Russian Centre for Public Opinion, a leading pollster known by its Russian acronym as VTsIOM.
Most analysts expect inflation to overshoot this year's government forecast of 11.8 percent and will be higher than even the central bank's less-optimistic forecast of 13 percent.
Russia's RTS benchmark stock index has fallen by around 70 percent from record highs seen in May, while the nation's gold and foreign currency reserves have dwindled by $82.8 billion since their peak on August 8.
Many construction sites in Moscow and other big cities have been frozen amid the liquidity crunch, while the government and state companies have nationalised at least four Russian banks impacted by the crisis.
Confidence in a market economy remains tenuous among most Russians, and memories of the 1998 crisis when Russia defaulted on its debts still linger in a country where a vast majority believes it is impossible to become rich by honest, hard work.
"Our people tend to believe that today's billionaires and big proprietors are not those who created something by hard work and therefore should be respected or stand out as an example," VTsIOM Director General Valery Fyodorov told a news conference.
"They rather tend to believe they (billionaires) are the ones who grabbed this property or received it through useful connections or through some other way ... Only one percent of those polled named businessmen and entrepreneurs as those who they trust and whose opinions they take into account."
VTsIOM said 58 percent of Russians believed it would be "useful" to nationalise large private companies. It said 50 percent supported nationalisation of private banks.
Russia's banking sector, populated by around 1,200 banks, is dominated by state-controlled Sberbank, which alone accounts for a quarter of all private deposits.
"The attitude to Sberbank has really changed, because the experience of the 1998 crisis showed that private banks go bust, while Sberbank stands solid like a rock," Fyodorov said.
The poll showed widespread economic ignorance among Russians. It showed 60 percent did not know that their deposits, including in private banks, are covered by an insurance system.
"People still believe that Sberbank is one thing and private banks are another. They can hardly be blamed for that, because they have their own sad experience already," Fyodorov said. (Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Hans Peters)