[2] VCIOM conducts "full cycle" marketing, social and political research, from instrument design and data collection to analysis and presentation of findings to its clients.

Besides that, there is a scientific Expert Council functioning in the Center, which consists of Russian sociologists, political scientists, marketologists, philosophers, and historians.

The Center designs and publishes monographs and edited volumes of sociological research devoted to the state of the public opinion in Russia.

[8] There are more than 70 specialists employed in the company headquarters in Moscow (with expertise in sociology, marketing, political science, finance, psychology, and statistics), as well as dozens in its offices around the country.

The Decree to launch VTsIOM (All-Union in those times) was adopted at the July meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1987.

Zaslavskaya tells that the Institute of Demoscopy (Federal Republic of Germany) headed by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann was taken as a model when establishing the Center.

In August 1989 Boris Grushin left VTsIOM to establish his own organization studying the public opinion "Vox Populi - Glas Naroda" (People’s Voice).

[12] In 1992 the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) that was originally established as a Division of the Center for raising charity funds, separated from VTsIOM.

[13] A young political scientist - Valery Fedorov who, as some sources note,[14] was close to the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation headed the office.

[19] According to Berlin-based bne IntelliNews, VTsIOM’s question about the 2019 Moscow protests was "subtly designed to give a result that supports the government’s point of view.

"[20] VTsIOM conducts research on both regional and federal levels, as well as in the post-Soviet space (together with colleagues from the former USSR—members of "Eurasian Monitor" Agency) and other countries.

VTsIOM regularly coordinates and implements international research projects for foreign and Russian customers such as UNDP, U.S. State Department, NATO Bureau in Moscow and others.