Trust in Public Institutions in Russia: The Lowest in the World
By Vladimir Shlapentokh
Professor of Sociology, Michigan State University

One of Stalin's most remarkable features was his suspicion of everybody in his own country and abroad. He mistrusted not only the so-called class enemies and their offspring (the bourgeois, landlords, tsarist bureaucrats and officers), not only those who helped the Bolsheviks fight the tsars, including the Mensheviks and the socialist revolutionaries, but also people from his own party. He suspected betrayal among the foreign Communists who saw him as God. His extreme mistrust prompted him to dismiss as false (or as a provocation) the urgent messages from his foreign agents about the imminent Nazi invasion of the USSR. By the end of his life, he mistrusted his closest aides who indeed loved and regarded him with the highest veneration. For instance, he suspected Viacheslav Molotov of being an English spy, and saw his wife Polina Zhemchuzhina as a Zionist agent. He also mistrusted ordinary people, regarding each Soviet individual as a potential traitor, deserter, or at best a thief. He bore a special doubt about the loyalty of peasants, Jews and the intellectuals from the national republics, Ukraine in particular. He ultimately mistrusted his own wife and the legion of their relatives, most of whom he sent to the Gulag. He supposedly trusted only children, according to a new documentary, Stalin's wife, produced by Slava Tsukerman in 2005.

Today the average Russian, with his or her distrust in almost everything, resembles somewhat the old leader, although their distrust, unlike Stalin, is mostly rational. A climate of mutual distrust dominates Russian life at all strata. Describing the mood in the country in March 2005, one of the most prominent and respected Russian journalists Yulia Kalinina wrote in Moskovskii Komsomolets, a popular newspaper, about "the moral degradation" of society, suggesting that people take for granted the fact that "lying and deception has become a norm of life." In her description of Russian society, Kalinina goes so far (probably exaggerating somewhat the state of affairs) as to divide people into two categories: those who deceive others regularly, and those who are unsuccessful at doing so. A slight exception is made for "some good and honest professionals" who can still be found in the country. As the major subjects of mistrust and the champions of deception, Kalinina names the state and "politicians, deputies, the government and the Kremlin aristocracy." The gloomy picture limned in Moskovskii Komsomolets has been supported publicly by politicians, businesspeople and journalists of all political colors, as well as by foreign observers.

Reflecting the general mistrust in society, Andrei Nekrasov, a Russian film director, used the title "Mistrust" for his 2004 documentary. The film is about the mysterious explosions of the two residential buildings in Moscow in September 1999, an event that helped propel Putin's election as president. Quentin Peel, the international affairs editor of the Financial Times, in the article "Mistrust returns to Russia," almost repeated Kalinina's text, noting that "Russians do not trust anybody besides a narrow circle of relatives and close friends."

It would be wrong to depict contemporary Russia, with its high level of mistrust, as the only country where the level of trust in society is a growing concern. In fact, in the last decades we have witnessed a universal tendency toward mistrust of people and social institutions across the world. The United States is definitely no exception and many American authors in the last decade have complained about this negative trend. For example, Gertrude Himmelfarb made this point in her famous book, The de-moralization of society: from Victorian virtues to modern values. In some cases, Russians and Americans, despite the radical differences in their societies, share the same level of mistrust of certain institutions (for instance, insurance companies). They are, in some ways, equally suspicious about the official versions of important events even if, unlike Russians, Americans usually become distrustful only years after the event. Under some circumstances, Russians and Americans have the same amount of trust in their presidents, even if the motivation behind the trust is very different.

However, when considering the level of mistrust of the various agents and structures of society-the president, the ruling elite, the bureaucracy, big business, the police and army, and political parties-Russia is not only radically different from the United States and other Western countries, but it can indeed be regarded as unique in the world. To make the extent of mistrust more apparent, we will compare the Russian case not only to the United States but also to developing countries. The second comparison will help to better understand the country's uniqueness.

Indeed, in terms of their lack of confidence in social institutions, the Russians are behind not only the most advanced countries in the world, but even countries known for their flimsy, unstable political systems, such as Colombia or Nigeria. This is also true for more stable countries such as Brazil and Indonesia. To use comparable data from the World Values Survey (1999-2002), which was carried out by the Institute of Social Research (University of Michigan), with only one exception (the army), the Russians are less confident in all social institutions than the people in the nations mentioned above.

It is remarkable that in the last years the Russians have been comparing their problems more and more to similar troubles in Brazil and a few other Latin American countries. The titles of recent articles in Izvestia ("Russia and Brazil: Common problems") and Nezavisamaia Gazeta ("Minister of Russian economy learns from Brazilian administrators") are indicators of this trend. However, even more remarkable is the readiness of the Russians to compare their country with Nigeria, a country rich in oil, which substantiates the definition of the country "as an African nation with missiles." This phrase is "popular," according to Krasnaia Zvezda, the official newspaper of the Minister of Defense, "among some Russian politicians and analysts."

The Fatal Mistrust of Social Institutions

Today Russia is a country, much more than any other, that mistrusts almost all social institutions in the country and political institutions in the first place. There is no one institution that can garner more than 40-50 percent of the nation's trust. Most political institutions enjoy a confidence level of only 10 to 30 percent and some even lower. Using the Levada Center's data (2005), I classified the major Russian institutions in three categories, depending on the trust level among the public: high, middle and low. Even if we suppose that the people's trust in Putin as a personality (but not the presidency as an institution) is higher than 50 percent, as suggested by some polling firms, Russia's lack of confidence in social institutions is still unique. The picture, of course, would be even more astounding if we excluded both Putin and the church from an international comparison (see the tables below).

Table 1: Institutions with a high level of trust Institution:

Level of trust (% of population):

Putin
47

Church
41

Army
31

--------

Table 2: Institutions with a middle level of trust

Institution:

Level of trust (% of population):

Security agencies
25

Media
24

Regional authorities
17

Attorney general's office
16

Courts
15

Federal government
14

Local authorities
14

Police
12

Trade Unions
12

----------

Table 3: Institutions with a low level of trust

Institution:

Level of trust (% of population):

State Duma
10

Council of Federation
10

Political parties
5

Other polling data exists and the hierarchy of institutions, based on the level of trust, is practically the same. Russians make a clear distinction between the old institutions that dominated Russian life in the past and the new institutions that emerged in the post-Soviet period. It is a reversal of the situation in the early 1990s when the Russians tended to be warmer toward the new institutions than the old ones. As shown in the table, the Russians have more confidence in the old institutions than the new ones. An important point should be made about the country's historical processes: the new institutions, with their low status in the Russian mind, could not compensate for the decline of the old institutions, including the government, security forces and the police.

The Institutions Russians Do Not Trust

Mistrust of "Democratic" Institutions

As previously explained, the data clearly shows that people have a special mistrust of the new democratic institutions in the country. Among the fifteen institutions included in the poll by the Levada Center, the three "pure" democratic institutions ranked at the bottom.

Among the 79 countries in the World Values Survey that responded to the given question, Russia held the 69th place with regard to the degree of trust in the parliament. Even if the Americans are very critical of all their institutions, their trust in the U.S. Senate and House of Representives is much higher than the trust of the Russians in their parliament. While both chambers of the Russian parliament (the State Duma and the Federal Council) collected only 10 percent of the people's trust, 53 percent of Americans trust Congress a "fair amount" and 7 percent a "great deal."

Of special interest are the Russians' attitudes toward political parties. The absolute majority of the Russians have practically no trust in the parties, an essential ingredient of the democratic system. The number of people who appreciate the right to choose between the different parties was close to zero (only 3 percent). The reason the Russians lack confidence in the parliament and political parties lies in the country's mistrust of election procedures. Almost 80 percent of the Russians, according to the survey of the Institute of Complex Social Studies (2003), said that "democratic procedures are pure show business." Not surprisingly, using comparable data from the World Values Survey, Americans are far more satisfied (65 percent) with democracy in their country than the Russians (only 7 percent have the same feelings). Of all 66 countries included in this survey on the satisfaction with democracy Russia was in last place.

Among all the democratic institutions in Russia, the media, with its meager 25 percent trust rating, runs better in terms of prestige than all others. This trust level should probably be attributed to the existence of a sort of pluralism that still can be observed in media, especially in newspapers. What is more, asked about their trust in the media in relation to major current events, Russians are inclined to assess the quality of information as quite high in comparison with the attitudes of Americans toward their media. In the aftermath of the Beslan events (the seizure of a school by Chechen terrorists on September 1, 2004), the Russians were asked, "Was the information in the media sufficiently complete?" One half of the population, a relatively big portion, said "yes." In February 2005, the trust of the Americans in the major networks stood at 21-31 percent.

Russians Do Not Trust their Market Institutions

The Russians' mistrust of democratic institutions can vie only with their lack of confidence in another type of new institution: the market. As a matter of fact, the Russians directly link their skepticism about democracy with their mistrust of market institutions. Among the 78 countries in which people responded to this question, Russia took fifth place in its mistrust of the positive impact of democracy on the economy (in Indonesia, 78 percent disagreed with the statement, and in Nigeria 63 percent; the percentages were much lower for all the developed countries in the world).

Therefore, it is not amazing that according to the same source, big business is mistrusted by the Russians as much as bureaucracy; no more than 20 percent of the Russians expressed in 1999 their confidence in "major companies." Of the 64 countries in this survey, Russia held 61st place in its level of mistrust in big business; in Nigeria, 70 percent; Brazil, 68 percent; Columbia, 59 percent; and Indonesia, 47 percent.

While the hostility of the Russians to rich people has softened in the last years in comparison with the "roaring 1990s," most Russians (88 percent) in 2004, according to Russian pollster Nikolai Popov, thought that "all large properties have been acquired illegally"; 78 percent are sure that "it is impossible to have an honest business"; 66 percent supported the state actions against the oil company "Yukos," headed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Two-thirds of the Russians do not want their children to become billionaires, and 77 percent of the Russians see the transfer of their capital abroad as the major motive of the Russian economic elite. Russians do not trust their financial institutions, particularly the 824 banks currently operating in the country. Twice in one decade (1992 and 1998), the Russians lost all their savings and most of them kept their dollars at home. According to a survey conducted by the Levada Center on July 22, 2004, only 24 percent of the Russians currently have some savings. Asked about where they think it is best to keep it, 34 percent of the Russians answered that it is safest to keep their savings at home; 32 percent would rather use the state bank; only 5 percent trust commercial banks for this purpose. If people were not so concerned about home burglaries, their reluctance to keep money in the bank would be much greater. Each day 400 burglaries are carried out, according to Attorney General Vladimir Ustinov. Voices from the media are talking about "the epidemic of burglary" in the capital. It was dramatic and amusing that during the burglary of the apartment of the former Russian Attorney General Alexei Illushenko the criminals stole $70,000, which the victim kept at home. The famous singer Lev Leshchenko "offered" burglars even more ($90,000). Although the banking system in the United States is less trusted than other institutions, such as the military and the police, many more Americans (53 percent) than Russians are confident in the banks.

The Mistrust of Bureaucracy

The only institution that claims an almost equivalent level of mistrust as democratic institutions is the Russian bureaucracy. An editorial in Izvestia, a respected newspaper, formulated its view more curtly: "the deep and systemic problem that faces Russia is the people's total mistrust of the authorities." Yurii Luzhkov literally repeated the editorial, suggesting that "the people do not trust the authorities and expect from them only ugly things." The same view was developed by Andrei Mazpov, a Siberian businessman, who is confident that "the mistrust of the authorities among Russians has genetic roots." All institutions that belong to executive and judicial powers arouse very negative feelings among the Russians. None of these institutions can gain the respect of more than 20 percent of the public. According to a poll conducted by the Levada Center in November 2005, 14-17 percent of the population distrusts the federal and local governments. In May 2005, 83 percent of the Russians subscribed to the opinion that "power is now under the control of a narrow circle of people who are not accountable to the people." Almost 80 percent believe that the local authorities are "connected with the criminal world."

In the United States, only 26 percent of Americans say that "most government officials can be trusted." However, when asked about specific aspects of the government, however, the public reports higher levels of trust. Fifty-eight percent of Americans say they trust the "executive branch headed by the president," the "legislative branch" (60 percent) and the "local government" (68 percent).

Businesses Mistrust the Government

Businesspeople are particularly distrustful of bureaucracy. After the arrest of Khodorkovsky, mistrust of the government among businesspeople increased enormously. After this event and the assault by tax agencies on several companies, businesspeople lost their belief in "the sacred character" of their property. Now all businesspeople, from oligarchs to owners of small shops, are convinced that the authorities can use many different strategies, from re-nationalization to invented tax debts, to send them into bankruptcy and transfer their property to people close to the government, local or national.

In March and April, Putin, facing the mistrust of the gonment, tried to assuage businesspeople. In his March meeting with the business community and particularly during his April presidential address he made several declarations to this effect. He promised to reduce the statute of limitations on privatization deals from "ten years to three." He called on the tax agency to "stop attacking businesses." Despite Putin's backpedaling, he did not dispel their suspicions about his attitudes toward their property. Suspicions remained high among the participants of the March meeting. As explained by one participant who did not want to be identified, "Apart from de-privatization, there is a lot of leverage that may be used to put pressure on companies. Taxation, for example." "No one will ever give us an ultimate guarantee in the matter of privatization," said another participant of the meeting. Many public figures in the business community, such as Andrei Bunich, head of the Union of Entrepreneurs and Leaseholders of Russia, and political analysts such as Igor Bunin were also very skeptical about the real impact of the meeting and the presidential address on reducing uncertainty in Russian economic life. The harsh sentence given to Mikhail Khdorkovsky and Lebedev (nine years in prison, plus the promise of a new trial with new accusations) sent a feeling of horror through the Russian business community, which is so frightened by the court's verdict that they did not even dare to discuss it with journalists.

Law Enforcement Agencies: The Courts and Police

Law enforcement agencies are highly distrusted by the Russians. Eighty five percent of the public thinks that "lawlessness and arbitrariness" are the major issues facing these agencies. Only 15 percent feel "protected against the arbitrariness of law enforcement agencies."

The Russian courts are regarded with high disdain by most people. A Russian talk show on the subject of the courts revealed the people's unanimous contempt for the judiciary system. Even the representative of the president at the Constitutional Court Michail Borshchevsky was not in disaccord with other participants when he declared, "we the people despise the courts and the courts despise us."

Only 15 percent trusted this institution in 2005. The World Values Study, which using a question similar to the one used by the Levada Center, allows us to compare Russian attitudes toward their judicial system with other countries in 1999-2001. According to this survey, Russia holds 34th place out of 46 countries with its 36 percent of trust in the courts, behind the United States (58 percent in 1990), Brazil (55 percent) and Columbia (48 percent). Four percent of the Russians are confident that judges take bribes.

Among all the social institutions and law enforcement agencies, the Russians have an especially low level of confidence in the police. According to data from the Fund of Public Opinion and the Levada Center, between 40 to 70 percent of Russians are afraid of the violence of the police. Only 10 percent of Russians (and 8 percent of Muscovites) fully trust the police.

A considerable number of Russians do not make any distinction between the police and criminals and are sure that they are in deep collusion. Twenty percent of respondents characterized Russian police officers as people who take bribes, steal, do not follow the law, and participate in criminal groups; 8 percent called the police "criminals in uniform." For this reason, many Russians assume that it is meaningless, or even dangerous to look for help from the police.

A recent news story, circulated across the country in early March 2005, about the police in the small city Blagoveshchensk in Bashkiria could only further diminish the Russians' trust in the police. In December 2004 a few policemen were allegedly beaten up by youngsters. As revenge, the police and the special commandos of the riot unit apprehended almost all the men in town between the ages 15 and 60, approximately 500 to 1000 men, and beat many of them severely. For several days, this "operation" had been kept hidden from the general public and even from Moscow. Under the pressure of a furious public, the ministry of internal affairs abandoned its version, which totally exonerated the wild arbitrariness of the local police and started an investigation. Asked about the Blagoveshchensk event, only a quarter of the Russians said that it was an "extraordinary" occurrence. However, 59 percent were confident that it is "a wide spread practice"; 46 percent of the respondents were sure that the guilty policemen will be punished. Liudmila Alexeieva, chairwomen of the Moscow Helsinki group, along with other human rights activists, found that similar events occurred in another city, Salavat, in Bashkorstan. Later, Alexeieva found that in the same manner "order was established" in Irkutsk and the Tver regions. Despite the promises of the president to investigate the case fully, human rights activists are "confident that the scale of the incident will be minimized by the authorities, and the guilty will be shielded." Alexeieva melancholically noted "it appears we have a gangster state."

The level of the Russians' mistrust of the police becomes all the more clear when compared to similar survey results from the United States. According to a Gallup poll, 71 percent of Americans believe that "most police officers" can be trusted. In fact, police officers rank among the top five most trusted professions in the U.S., along with military officers and teachers. They are more trusted than doctors, journalists and Catholic priests. When asked about the police as an institution, 64 percent of Americans have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the police-second only to the military as a top-rated American institution.

Institutions that Some Russians Still Trust

The Russians have preserved their trust in three old social institutions: the army, the church and the president

The Russian Army in comparison with the FSB

The army, the sacred cow of Russian society for over a thousand years, is trusted by only 30 percent of the public. Compared to the 78 countries included in the World Values Survey, Russia holds middle ground, clearly yielding to countries with non democratic regimes, such as China and Vietnam, but above some developed countries such as Germany and Italy, and developing countries such as Nigeria and Peru. At the same time, Russian attitudes toward the military are more negative than in Finland or Great Britain among developed countries as well as in Indonesia and Brazil among developing ones. The prestige of the army is much higher in America than in Russia. In the U.S., 73 percent of respondents say that "most military officers can be trusted." When asked about how much confidence they have in the military as an institution, 75 percent said they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the military.

However, behind the data that shows a relatively decent level of trust in the army in Russia, we see a high level of hostility, which is at odds with a thousand years of Russian history. As suggested by Alexander Prokhanov, the most prominent admirer of the Soviet empire in the country, on the occasion of the Day of the Army (77 percent of Russians consider it an important day), "The Russians deified their army . which was thought of as higher than the institution of the state. Now people do not like their army," including liberals, the ruling elite, "the mothers who give their sons to the army," the president, and poor people, particularly those see military duty as unjust, "because only the children of the poor" serve their country.

Various Russian data confirm Prokhanov's diagnosis. As the Fund of Public Opinion showed, only 35 percent of the Russians in February 2005 assessed the situation in the army positively (29 percent assessed it as "satisfactory," only 6 percent as "good or very good"). No more than 19 percent think that "the situation in the army is improving" and 79 percent are confident that "society is not sufficiently informed about the situation in the army." Almost 40 percent confessed to interviewers (an unbelievable development in comparison to the Soviet times) that "they are ready to resort to any means in order to keep their family members out of the army." Half of the population pointed to hazing as the number one problem in the army and the harsh conditions of life in the barracks as the second biggest problem. Data from other public opinion firms confirms the Fund of Public Opinion data. In the Levada Center's survey in April 2005, only 9 percent of the Russians said that they "respect" the army and 3 percent said that they are "proud of it."

However, in spite of the relatively low status of the army in the Russian mind it is still higher than that of the security police (FSB) (31 percent compared to 25 percent). Still, Russians trust the residents of Lubianka (the notorious building in downtown Moscow that faced, until 1991, the monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of CheKa) more than any democratic or governmental institution. It is also indicative that trust in the FSB in the last four years has been much more stable than the trust in the army.

The prestige of the FSB is only moderately hurt by its "glorious" past. As in other cases with similar attitudes, the low trust in the FSB reflects not only personal, emotional attitudes toward this organization, but also a low belief in its competence and professionalism.

The low trust in the FSB can be attributed to the involvement of many of its officers in corruption, a big contrast to the KGB, which was considered by the population as the least corrupt institution in Soviet society. As a matter of fact, the public attributes the inability of the FSB to fight terrorism and protect people to its incompetence and particularly its corruption. After the events at Beslan, 55 percent of the Russians did not believe that the FSB could achieve its goals in the fight against terrorism as proclaimed by Lubianka. Asked why the FSB cannot catch Shamil Basaiev, the Chechen "enemy No. 1," 30 percent of the Russians said "incompetence," and 40 percent said "corruption."

The Church and its Two Faces for Russians: Pure Religious and Pure Political

Besides the Russian president, the most trusted institution is the church. As data from the Levada Center show, the church, with its 43 percent trust rating, is the most trusted institution in the country aside from Putin as a personality. According to the World Values Study, unlike the case with the army, Russia has much more trust in the church than in most developed countries, with the exceptions of Poland, Italy and particularly the U.S., even if in each of these countries there has been a decline in the respect for religion and trust in priests. The Russians trust the church three times more than the Czechs, two times more than the British and Dutch and almost one and half times more than the French, Spanish and Swedish people. At the same time, most developing countries showed much higher confidence in the church than Russia (Indonesia and Nigeria by one and a half times more, Colombia and Brazil by 1.2 and 1.3 times more, respectively).

The Russians' trust in the church can hardly be explained by the depth of their religious feelings. Rather, it is the institution itself, which is seen as less corrupt and more competent than other institutions, that attracts Russians to the Orthodox Church. Only 12 percent of the Russians recognize religion as "very important in their life"; this places Russia in 70th place among the 79 countries included in the World Values Survey, sharing practically the same rank as most European countries.

Indeed, the speed with which Russians left atheism and now claim to be religious (in 1989, 53 percent of Russians declared themselves "non believers"; in 2005, only 23 percent did the same, and the number of people who considered themselves "Orthodox" rose from 20 percent to 68 percent) allows us to suspect that the people are currently undergoing a conformist mass conversion from atheism to "new born Christianity."

The release of the people from the grip of the totalitarian state could indeed permit an upsurge of dormant religious feelings. However, other data also suggest that the ties of most Russians with the Orthodox Church are far from being close. Only 6 percent of the Russians said, according to the World Value Survey, that they attend church once or more in a month (the lowest level among 79 nations), compared to 60 percent of Americans.

Other data also show that Russians look to the church not so much as a repository of their religious feelings, but as an institution that can play a positive role in society. It is curious that the Russians, who are far behind the Americans in the recognition of religion as "very important in life" (57 percent versus 12 percent), are similar in terms of expecting their leaders to be religious people. Only 25 percent of the Russians disagree that "it is better for the country if more people with strong religious beliefs hold public office"; this is an exact match with the percentage of Americans who disagree.

The church has an ambivalent reputation in Russia, combining two roles in the Russian mind-that of the victim and that of the servant of the state. On one hand, the church has a reputation as a casualty of the Communist tyranny, a circumstance that attracts the sympathies of many citizens, even if the "victim factor" has diminished in the last fifteen years. On the other side, the church, throughout Russian history, has been a servant of the authorities. It played the same role in the Soviet times and in this capacity it survived the Soviet regime and continues to function in post-Soviet Russia in a very complex role.

Some scholars see the church as following the old Russian tradition of being a submissive agent of the authoritarian state. As suggested by Dmitry Furman, a leading Moscow political analyst, musing about the future of relations between the Catholic and Orthodox churches after the death of Jean-Paul II, "The Russian Orthodox church immensely depends on the state." The haters of Putin's regime among Communists and nationalists extended their ire also to the church for serving as one of its props. Russian liberals, as a rule, also show their hatred of the church, regarding it as one of Putin's myrmidons. They do not miss an opportunity to criticize the church for its cooperation with the KGB in the past, and its current successful attempts to eliminate the constitutional separation between church and state. They also condemned the use of religion as an instrument for the glorification of Stalin and the Soviet empire outside the official church.

However, the conclusion that the church is simply a servant of the state is one sided. As never before in Russian history, the church has become a more equal partner of the state and in some cases it even imposes its will on the Kremlin and demonstrates a clear tendency toward monopolizing the influence on the spiritual life of the country.

Indeed, in view of its authority in society, the Kremlin highly appreciates the church as its partner and agent. It has done much to help the church to satisfy its ambitions. The Kremlin, eager to maintain good relations with the Vatican, did not overturn the Patriarch's veto on the trip of Pope Jean-Paul II to Russia. The state assists the church in enhancing its wealth. The state endowed it with special licenses to import alcohol and tobacco free of customs fees. The church can completely rely on the state in the continuing expansion of its commercial activities in various areas (including agriculture), which has already made the church one of the richest institutions in the country. Recently, with the full support of federal and local authorities, the church started a grandiose project, at least by Russian standards, for the construction of a network of hotels in the central Russian regions. The material superiority of the church over the state was manifested clearly on the Day of Victory when the religious authorities in Moscow showered the veterans, who had been invited to the major cathedral, with valuable gifts, which no state organization could even remotely afford.

The Kremlin accepted the Orthodox Church's rude intervention in several domestic developments that were always under the control of the state. It is now the Church-and not the Communist state-that comes up as a persecutor of the believers in other Christian denominations. The local authorities provide the church with the necessary police force for this purpose. This recently happened, for instance, in Udmurtia where local Protestants became victims of the state, when the police tried to prevent their religious gatherings.

The church also successfully played the role of the Communist state as a censor, using again the authorities to ban or condemn various cultural activities. For instance, in Arkhangelsk, the church recently enforced the removal of some posters that it deemed sacrilegious.

The close cooperation between the state and the church, the ostensibly intimate relations between Putin and the Patriarch Alexii II, the regular interaction between the federal and local authorities and the church is a fixture in the Russian media. All Russian officials, from Putin down to local officials, rarely miss the important religious rituals linked not only to Christmas or Easter, but also to less significant religious ceremonies. The Communist newspaper Sovietskaia Rossia sardonically noted that Putin twice knelt in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during his visit to Israel in April 2005. The presidential envoy in the Far East, General Konstantin Pulikovsky, recently called himself "a deeply religious person." No one was amazed, for instance, when the church recently awarded the Minister of Internal Affairs Rashid Nurgaliev with its major medal in honor of Dmitry Donskoi, while the Kremlin, in its turn, poured its medals on all the major ecclesiastical dignitaries.

These developments, which have almost made the Orthodox religion an official one, brought benefits to both sides, even if in most other countries this relationship would significantly undermine the prestige of the church. Due to the active willingness of the state to demonstrate its loyalty to Orthodox religion, the church has been able to expand its activities in all spheres of life. Many big businesspeople as well as criminals follow the example of the state and also exploit various opportunities to show their allegiance to religion and the church.

As a result, Orthodox priests have become a fixture in practically all spheres of life, a development that 72 percent of Russians predicted in 1989 when they atched the gradual collapse of the Communist state and its ideology. The blessing of new offices or companies, religious courses in school (even if so far only on an optional basis), the appearance of priests in army units and prisons and religious broadcasts are regular phenomena in Russia. The interaction between state and church is particularly visible during various religious holidays. Surveying the developments in Russia last Easter, an author in Izvestia described how in Kursk traffic in the city was halted during a religious procession. In the Kurgan region, a helicopter adorned with a religious icon visited several cities, while in Irkutsk a plane flew over the boundaries of the region pouring down sacred water and in Cheliabinsk one car in a train was transformed into a church, which traveled across the region.

What is more, in the last years the Orthodox Church, with great confidence, has been moving to become the leading ideological institution in the country. The church clearly wins the sympathy of most Russians compared to liberal capitalist ideals. The Communist Party, with its glorification of the October revolution and Stalin, is the church's last serious ideological adversary, claiming to be the sole repository of Russian patriotism, Russian statehood and unity. Never before had the Orthodox Church been so close to achieving ideological supremacy as on the eve of the celebration of the Day of Victory over Germany. At the IX International Russian Congress (Sobor), Alexii II, who has a strong reputation as the enemy of the West, openly challenged the communist dogmas and bluntly refused to ascribe the victory to "socialism and Marxist-Leninist ideology," contending that the victory was in fact achieved in spite of the communist ideology. The country was saved because "the detractors of Orthodoxy" in the Soviet times "were unable to destroy the fealty of the Russians to the Orthodox religion and spiritual heritage."

There is another institution that can compete with the church when it comes to the trust of the Russians: the family. In Soviet times, the family was a semipublic, semiprivate institution. The Soviet regime looked at the family as almost a state unit. Now the family is totally separated from society. It is a purely private institution that bears no responsibility before society and the state for the education and the behavior of children, not to mention the adult members of the family. At the same time, the family for many people is still the only emotional and material refuge against the adversities of life, a place for raising children and building wealth. The importance of family in the life of the Russians is relatively high, even if it is lower than in most countries of the world. According to the World Values Survey, 76 percent of the Russians say that "family is very important." It holds the 75th place, yielding to the U.S. (95 percent), Italy (90 percent) and France (88 percent), without speaking of developing countries.

The Trust in Putin, also Two Faces: the Single Repository of Order and an Ineffective Politician

As is the case with the church, the Russians look at their president from two angles. First, the institution of the presidency, headed by Putin, is the single one to which the Russians link their yearning for order. Putin has no rival in this capacity, because he has continued Yeltsin's policy of almost completely destroying the respect for all other institutions (besides the church) that could take responsibility for maintaining stability in society. In this way, by default, Putin has received a vote of confidence from the people that exceeds any other politician in the country. He indeed has been able to garner up to 40 percent (in March-April 2005) of the Russians' trust. Other general assessments of the president are at the same level: 66 percent of the Russians approved Putin's work as president (2005).

Answering the question "for whom would you vote if the presidential election took place next Sunday?," 30 percent pointed to Putin (some pollsters pointed to higher levels, up to 43 percent in January 2005), while Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the politician who came in second in the poll, captured only 4 percent. Even if the pollster Alexander Oslon is very close to the Kremlin, he is probably right when he says that "Putin is for the Russians the leading construction that contains their normative images about the world and Russia."

However, looking from another angle, we see that as soon as the Russians move from judging Putin in general to appraising his specific activities we discover a lack of confidence in his ability to solve the country's major problems in the last five years. The Levada survey of March 2005 showed the following: Only 32 percent of the Russians thought that their president was successful in "the rise of the standard of living"; 14 percent, "the economic development of the country"; 13 percent, "the reform of the army"; 12 percent, "the fight against corruption"; 11 percent, the "solution of the Chechen problem"; 10 percent, "the fight against crime"; 8 percent, "the creation of positive conditions for private business"; 4 percent, "the defense of democracy and political freedoms."

The discrepancy between Putin's general assessment and the evaluation of his performance in individual spheres of social life explains why his rating declined only modestly after the mass protests against the social benefits reforms in January 2004.

Indeed, the discrepancy between the assessment of Putin in general and his activities in various spheres is not exceptional, but it is much greater than in the case of other national leaders. Compare it, for instance, with the respective data about President Bush. In May 2005, 46 percent approved how the American president did his job, while 55 percent approved of his work on terrorism, 45 percent on foreign affairs, 40 percent on the economy, and another 40 percent on Iraq.

The leader of any country always tends to have a "Teflon" quality, that is, to some degree the leader is impervious to harsh criticisms for his or her failures in domestic and foreign policy. As a result, the evaluation of the leader's performance in general tends to be significantly higher than the estimates of his or her activity in any individual sphere of society. In political life, the leader represents first of all the country's unity and stability, so his existence alone is considered a blessing to society. If to some degree it is important to America, it is several times more important to a society like Russia, which is fraught with various destructive tendencies. Regardless of how the Russians rate Putin's performance, the idea of his disappearance is frightening for the majority of the public. Russians avoid blaming Putin personally for the various mishaps in the country, preferring to vent their anger on other institutions instead. This tendency was demonstrated clearly by the Russians' reflections on the responsibility for the tragedies at the Moscow Theater (2002) and Beslan (2004), as well as for the reform of social benefits. While the people blame all governmental agencies (both national and local), they tend to exonerate Putin. If Putin's performance as president dispels the most acute fears about the disintegration of the country, as was the case in the Yeltsin period, the same performance fuels Russian pessimism about economic progress and the fight against crime and corruption in the country.

The Efficiency of Institutions in the Public's Eye

The study of Russian attitudes toward political institutions serves two purposes. These attitudes cast light on the inclination of people to cooperate with the central and local administrations, the judicial system and the army, among others, and they measure the likelihood of whether people will participate in governmental affairs, including elections. In any society people have the option to deal only with people they trust and from whom they do not feel alienated.

At the same time, the trust toward institutions can also be interpreted as an assessment of the efficiency of these institutions by the population.

The deep mistrust of social institutions in Russia reflects the fundamental fact that the society is deeply fragmented and people feel alienated from political power and the institutions that serve it. The Kremlin cannot rely on the support of the masses in any of its endeavors. Whatever the assessment of the Soviet system and the cause of the loyalty of the Russians to the Soviet system it is evident that even in the last decade of the USSR, prior to Perestroika, the leadership was confident that it could involve millions of people in their various campaigns. The contrast with contemporary American society is even more drastic. Whatever the critical attitudes of the Americans toward their institutions, the leadership of the nation, religious leaders, the federal state and local communities have a lot of resources for convincing the American people to support their actions in the case of necessity.

However, as discussed above, the negative attitudes toward institutions also measure somewhat their efficiency. In this case, the Russians, watching how these institutions operate, serve as appraisers. The available data show that the public estimates the efficiency of these institutions as very low. Their mistrust of the police indicates not only their personal fear of the police, but also their conviction that the police, as a public institution, are inefficient. In the case of necessity-for instance, to collect on the debts of their clients-they address their concerns not to the police, but to criminals as more efficient operators. They even have a tendency to elect criminals as more efficient than administrators.

Russians not only wish to keep their children out of the army, but no less than one third of them believe that the army is inefficient and cannot defend the country. As a rule, 80-90 percent of the Russians ascribe the causes of terrorist acts to the inefficiency of law enforcement agencies and the government; they express their confidence that the perpetrators, if they escape, will never be found.

A host of events in the last year confirm the verdict of the Russian people. These events include the crisis of the submarine Kursk in 2000, the handling of the siege in the Moscow Theater in 2003, the military maneuvers in the Barents Sea, with the aborted launching of all missiles, the failure in the defense of the children in Beslan in 2004, the war in Chechnia and the crises and revolutions in Georgia, Abkhasia, Ukraine, Moldova and Kirgizia. It is reasonable to add to this list the ineptitude of the fight against crime and corruption, and the implementation of the benefits reform in 2004.

Conclusion: The Vulnerability of Russian Society

Indeed, with such low confidence in social institutions, Russia is vulnerable to serious cataclysms. When in 1941 the existence of Russia as a state was in jeopardy after the defeat of the Red Army in the battle with the Germans there were powerful institutions that could coordinate life in the country and mobilize the people and resources for the war against the invaders. Besides the high authority of Stalin, as recognized by everybody in the country, there was first of all the Communist Party, the army and the KGB, which had networks that embraced literally each individual in the country. These institutions enjoyed the confidence of the population (whatever were the feelings of people toward them). Empowered by the Kremlin, they were able to solve all the urgent problems facing the country and its people.

There are no such institutions in contemporary Russia that are able to take care of the country in the case of a disaster. The local authorities, while trying to take control over the nefarious developments, have little support from the population. In any case, they will act in their own local interests, ignoring the fate of the nation.

There is only one institution that can maintain Russian unity and rally the country in the case of emergency: the Russian president and to some degree the church. In the case of tragic developments, Putin must play the role of Stalin in 1941, but he must do so without Stalin's charisma, and without the effectiveness of the Communist Party.

In the case of an emergency, Putin would address the Russian church and the Patriarch, who is presumably his personal friend, for help. In this case, Putin would again follow the example of Stalin, who was notoriously cruel toward the church and sent many thousands of priests to the Gulag. However, during the war Stalin dropped the socialist lexicon from the media and based the official ideology only on Russian nationalism. He not only stopped the repressions against the church, but reopened many churches, halted antireligious propaganda, dismantled atheistic organizations, sent a greeting to the head of the church, declaring him "a leader elected by God," and finally invited in 1943 the church's dignitaries to talk and supposedly come to a reconciliation (as it turned out, after the victory, the persecution of the church resumed).

The data on the attitudes toward Russia's institutions point to the precarious character of the state and explains why the people, since 1991, have had feelings of uncertainty and mistrust in the future.

Russia can face many unpleasant developments in the years to come. If we take Russian public opinion as a sort of expert view on the country's future, the most serious disaster that faces the country (I excluded from consideration the dangerous long-term tendencies included in the surveys), according to 70 percent of the population, is an economic crisis that "will bring a drastic decline in the standard of living and the starvation of a considerable part of the population." The economic crisis of 1998 has not left the Russian mind. Several professional economists are not as pessimistic as the population, but also look at the Russian economic future with many reservations.

Terrorist acts against strategically important objects, such as nuclear power stations or water reservoirs, are considered second in importance for 67 percent of the Russians. The public still lives under the spell of what happened in Moscow in 2003 and in Beslan in 2004.

The Russians ranked in third place the threat to their country from "ecological catastrophes" like Chernobyl (59 percent). But when asked what they were most afraid of personally, most Russians ranked "ecological disasters" in first place.

As the next most serious threat to the country, the Russians are concerned about the collapse of their country as a result of separatism (the loss of border territories such as the Far East and Kaliningrad) (42 percent), the infiltration of China and Vietnam (58 percent), and the emergence of several independent states (34 percent). In fact, 34 percent of the Russians think that their country may split into several independent states. The public is also concerned about various political turbulences, such as "a split among political elites on the eve of the presidential election in 2008" (46 percent), "a revolution like those which happened in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyz" (27 percent), and "the civil war" (27 percent).

The Russians see these possible developments in the context of the mass protest actions against the Kremlin and the local authorities in January 2005. There were demonstrations, meetings, and a blockade of the roads in protest of the monetization of social benefits. There was even a modest protest in Bashkorstan in March-April 2005 against its corrupt leader Murtaza Rakhimov who was linked to the stormy developments in the post-Soviet space in the last year and a half.

It was, of course, the Russian elites who followed the events with especially bad feelings. The "rose" revolution in Georgia in November 2003 and particularly the "orange revolution" in Ukraine in October-December 2004 scared them. However, the masses and the elites watched the developments in Central Asia with an even higher level of consternation. While the ousting of the Kyrgyz president in March 2005 could be considered, with some strain, as another "colorful," "velvet" or peaceful revolution, despite the pillaging of stores and property in Bishkek, nobody dares to label in this way the violent rebellion in Uzbekistan which brought hundreds of victims. As numerous sources show, the anxiety of the elites, which is partly genuine and partly simulated, is much higher than among ordinary Russians.

Indeed, the likelihood of a "colorful" revolution or even major turmoil a la Andijon, with the plundering mob and the spilling of blood, has become a permanent topic in all political debates in Russia. There is a split among participants about the probability of these events materializing. All political actors try to use the specter of a revolution for their purposes, almost pushing the country toward the self-fulfilling prophesy. The pro governmental forces, deviating from their main function to spread confidence in the future, prophesize the incoming revolutions and separatism in order to present Putin as the hope for order in society. Sometimes they go too far. Even seasoned Moscow analysts were puzzled when the head of the Kremlin administration Dmitry Medvedev, instead of spreading confidence in the future, said that Russia has a good chance of collapsing if the elites do not unite. The authorities have unofficially banned the use of the color orange in posters or shop windows, in order not "to arouse dangerous associations," and particularly by participants of demonstrations in Moscow. What concerns the oppositional media, they vie with each other over who will offer an assortment of the gloomiest "revolutionary" scenarios. Some analysts have submitted to the perplexed public "a schedule of revolutions," oscillating between a choice of dates (2005, 2006 or 2007). Other authors talk about the inevitable "Fifth Russian Revolution," or the inescapability of "the velvet revolution," or a about a new violent "1917."

It is possible that ordinary people have a more sound vision of the country's future than the Russian analysts who serve various political interests. However, in any case, Russia will likely have to deal with some unpleasant events in the next years.

If one of these turbulent events materializes, Russia will pay dearly for the population's distrust of the major institutions and their inefficiency. The black out in Moscow and in four other regions close to Moscow on May 25, 2004, was very interesting in this respect. Roughly five million people lost electricity for 24 hours. The outage should hardly be regarded as an extraordinary event in light of the similar events that happen regularly in other countries, including the United States. Besides, against expectations the Moscow authorities were able to overcome the crisis in one day without the loss of human life; the official TV stations tried to suggest that all services had worked almost perfectly. However, unofficial sources described a very different picture, which confirms the high suspicion of the public about their institutions and particularly the predisposition to believe in the worst possible scenarios. The lack of information during the first hours of the power failure (only 29 percent of the Muscovites said that they were well informed immediately after the incident) was one of the biggest problems contributing to the Muscovites' panic and outrage. It showed that in Moscow there was not, as confessed by V. Platonov, the speaker of the Moscow Duma, an effective mobilizing system that could react to an event of this sort. Though usually omnipresent, the police were not prepared for the emergency. They suddenly disappeared from the streets, and for quite a while no one was regulating the intersections where the traffic lights were out. Only 20 percent of the Muscovites gave a positive assessment of the police response. Even eight hours after the beginning of the outage, there were only a few buses on the streets to substitute for the metro, trams and trolleybuses. Everyone besides the subway employees (41 percent of the public assessed their work highly) was busy playing the blame game.

There were quite a few reports of people helping each other, as well as many stories reporting just the opposite. Listening to the statements of the officials that the electric grid is obsolete and such accidents can occur at any time and in any place, the public concluded that "Russia is doomed to live from one catastrophe to another." Indeed, 78 percent of the Muscovites in the aftermath of the blackout were confident that the same event would occur in the near future.

However, if history spares Russia from these disasters, the country will likely drag on for the next years with all its chronic problems. It is probably true that trust in institutions, as well as trust between people, especially businesspeople, supports economic growth. However, contrary to some authors who tend to see trust as the main variable determining economic progress, it is only one of several factors that shape economic developments.

If business in Russia, particularly in the extracting industries, brings high returns in the future, even with the negative impact of many other factors, the economy will continue to grow. Hoping to achieve high profits from their business dealings, investors (domestic and foreign) will in the future ignore even the negative political and social environment. Some Russians muse about to what degree Marx was correct. One author cited a British commentator who argued that if the rate of profit is "100 percent," the capitalists will be "ready to trample on all human laws," and if the rate is "300 percent," the capitalists will be ready "to commit any crime and take any risk," including the risk of being put to death.

Today Russia is indeed an interesting testing ground for the role of people's attitudes toward their institutions. What is the minimal level of public trust necessary for social institutions to function without massive tribulations? We will learn the answer to this question only several years in the future.

Acknowledgment: The author wishes to thank Joshua Woods for his editorial contribution to this article.