Interpersonal trust in the structure of social capital (on material from the Vologda oblast)

Non-economic factors in the society’s development (including social capital) are beginning to attract public attention. This is largely due to the crisis situation affecting almost all country’s regions. Social capital formed in the society is considered as an important condition for its development. This phenomenon has a complex structure. The basis of social capital is trust. The study of the nature of trust, revealing its essence, factors influencing it, practices generating, strengthening or weakening it, peculiarities of formation depending on the cultural environment, identifying THE opportunities for confidence building appear to be significant areas of the concept of social capital. The object of our study is basic trust; the purpose is to diagnose the state of basic trust in the region based on the analysis of public opinion polls conducted in the region by the Federal State Budgetary Institution of Science “Vologda Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sci-ences”. Empirical data distinguish groups of respondents characterized by different degrees of trust, reveal the presence of focal points of positive moods, the growing readiness to unite, which is considered as a condition for creating a new culture of trust. There is dependence of trust on respondents’ socio-demographic and status characteristics. Analyzing the degree of trust in the region makes it possible to assess the degree of population’s adaptation to the changing living conditions, as well as characterize the social climate in the regional community.