Political Trust in Russia: Some Features and the Problem of Optimality

The article discusses the features of political trust in post-Soviet Russia, one of the key factors in the political process, which plays an important role in ensuring political stability and sustainable development of society. Data from sociological research from the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences is used as a basis. Analysis has shown that political trust is directly related to the implementation of the basic ideas and principles of democracy, essential for expansion and deepening of democratic processes, and for creation of a full-fledged civil society in modern Russia. The data reveals the existence of a direct link between the degree and prevalence of political trust and the results of market and democratic reforms of the 1990s and 2000s. At the same time, analysis reveals a huge gap in the level of trust in certain political leaders and the main government institutions, which persists despite the significant increase in the level of confidence in individual political entities noted in recent years. Such imbalance and incoherence is one of the reasons for the current contradictions of mass social and political consciousness. In view of these important circumstances, an attempt is made to raise and discuss the issue of optimum limits of confidence in political leaders, institutions of public authorities and political parties. The authors consider the impact of extreme levels of trust and distrust in politics. They trace the dependence of institutional trust from interpersonal trust in the political sphere. Considerable attention is paid to the analysis of the main reasons for people's distrust in political and social institutions, and socio-political organizations, results of which can highlight ways of neutralizing or overcoming problems revealed.

Government, civil society, democracy, optimality, political capital, political trust