Karavay A. V. The Social Capital of Russian Society in the Face of External Shocks of Different Nature. Theoretical Economics. 2022. No. 4. P. 134-148.

Текст статьи/выпуска на сайте журнала URL: https://www.inecon.org/docs/2022/VTE_2022_4.pdf (дата обращения 23.11.2022)

Abstract

In the article, based on the data of the FCTAS RAS 2001-2022, the state and dynamics of various components of the social capital of the Russian society are analyzed. It is shown that already at the very beginning of the special military operation, society consolidated its trust in the main authorities (the President of the Russian Federation, the Government of the Russian Federation, the heads of the regions of the Russian Federation) and social (the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Church) institutions, structures, and personalities. Their actions during the pandemic also contributed to the fact that the population's confidence in them increased. At the same time, the population for the most part has not trusted both chambers of the Parliament and local self-government bodies for many years. It has also been demonstrated that there is some fragmentation of society depending on the channels used to obtain information, but it does not pose a serious threat to public trust, because many Russians are very critical of all sources of information that have increasingly discredited themselves in their eyes in recent years. It is shown that among Russians there is a high level of interpersonal trust and willingness to help others with relatively low subjective assessments of the level of mutual assistance in society. Such a mismatch indicates many untapped requests to counterparties on social networks that have grown up in the conditions of various kinds of external shocks. The article also describes the structure of social networks in Russian society, which are mostly low-resource, but, nevertheless, still provide the majority of the country's population with access to expanding life opportunities, and not only to household assistance. It is shown that only a quarter of Russians in the spring of 2022 were completely excluded from such networks. There were also the same number of those who, without providing any kind of help to others, nevertheless counted on receiving it from their social networks. Donors who provide at least some resources in social networks are traditionally noticeably less than recipients. This asymmetry is aggravated by the fact that the basis of social networks is a very small (less than 10% of the representatives of the mass strata) group of high resource donors, who are also the main beneficiaries of the most scarce resources of social networks, which can serve as a factor in further deepening social inequalities. However, so far, due to the high degree of conversion of the potential of even low-resource social networks into real help, these networks contribute rather to the consolidation of society.