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Was pre-Communist Russia particularly low trust? It was certainly highy authoritarian and absolutist, but I don't think that's the same thing as low-trust. Even the relative destitution of the Russian people isn't really indicative of low trust and I would say more to do with Russia's lack of industralisation and entrenched serfdom. But previously other European countries had entrenched serfdom and were high trust (e.g. medieval France)
My only cultural touchstone is Crime and Punishment, which does imply a certain level of high trust in Russian society at the time. Indeed, one of Dostoevsky's main points with his writing is that these new modernist (and ultimately proto-Communist) ideas becoming popular at the time destroys morality and society.
I think it was, at least compared to western europe or east asia. I lived in Russia in the early '90s, and it was extremely low trust as a society. Everything is accomplished through bribery, nepotism and blackmail, nothing through official venues. The people don't trust the government or each other, the government doesn't trust the people or itself.
There are various Russian theories about this, but the most popular I recall was that Russian society evolved under extremely harsh foreign domination, the Mongols, Golden Horde, Polish-Lithuanians etc. and their own homegrown psychopaths. Russian elite society is incredibly low-trust and untrustworthy, moreso than the rest, hence the regular purges that have marked all of Russian political history.
Recall the tale of the murder of Rasputin, and if it sounds crazy, realize that the Russian nobility did shit like that constantly.
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