Trust in Post-Soviet Countries, Ten Years On

AbstractThis paper looks at recovery from the normative collapse which followed the fall of the Soviet Union; two large-scale surveys allow comparison of levels of trust in 2001 and 2010/2011. The collapse of the Soviet Union was not just an economic event; it destroyed the normative framework and drove people back to reliance on things they could see and people they knew. The main findings are that even 20 years of building new institutions has not restored trust. Countries differ: Moldova, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine have the least trust and the least faith in the future, and Kazakhstan has the highest, followed by Russia and Armenia. There is a relationship with economic recovery and also with sociopolitical factors, but, for the most part, the results reflect the failure of a range of autocratic and authoritarian regimes to establish social cohesion.