ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses questions related to the mental climate in Russia. It focuses on the aspects of confidence, success factors and conceptions about the future, all of which are relevant to structural conditions and the conditions for everyday reproduction. The Soviet system produced a special network of informal relations to help people cope in the shortage economy. The attitudes and beliefs were factor analysed with the aim of finding some basic dimensions of the mental climate. The difference compared to confidence in political institutions is quite considerable. Confidence in the mass media constitutes a dimension of its own. One of the key aspects of social life is the question of how to succeed. The diversity and complexity of the Russian mental climate is clearly in evidence in an examination of the discussion that went on in Russian newspapers in 1995–1998.
