Institutional trust, the image of the future of the country and the image of the personal future

The article explores the relationship between institutional trust, the image of a country’s future, and the image of a person’s personal future. Recently, representatives of various disciplines have been paying increased attention to the concept of “image of the future”. It underlies management and strategic decisions and it is one of the key elements in the development of culture and society. The interest of researchers focuses mainly on the social, political and economic circumstances of its occurrence. Trust is rare among them. Although, as several studies show, trust can significantly influence the sustainable development of society, an optimistic vision for the future, the emergence of long-term orientations, etc. According to data from all-Russian surveys, institutional trust correlates with the emergence of a positive image of the country’s future and an image of a personal future, while distrust of institutions correlates with negative images of the country’s future and images of a personal future. Moreover, the presence and strength of such a correlation depends on the characteristics of the social institution. Trust in government institutions, as opposed to trust in public institutions, has a more stable correlation with images of the future. Socio-economic, socio-demographic, and territorial factors determine the relationship between institutional trust and images of the future in different ways. The importance of such factors depends on the specifics of social institutions: state institutions are more likely to ignore their effects than public institutions. In addition, this relationship is contextual – it depends on the events and processes occurring in society and the world. These events and processes become especially significant against the background of various crises – political, military, epidemic and other factors. According to the study, during such periods the correlation of institutional trust with positive image of the future becomes less noticeable.