Reference societies and societal security shocks in Russia

The article develops a hypothesis about the gravitational nature of societal security shocks as the phenomena of destabilizating the value core of societies because of critical changes at their geographical and cultural “borders”. The category of “reference countries/societies” is introduced, the gap in the results of development with which leads to the loss of legitimacy of the path of development chosen by society. The societal security level of Russia is assessed basing on GDP per capita and HDI difference with the groups of countries historically and geopolitically connected with Russia (the “West World”, the former “Socialist Bloc”, the countries of the former USSR, the countries of the EAEU, BRICS and SCO). The difference of these indicators is adjusted to the Russians’ interest to the countries. Then the gravity model of Russians’ interest to other countries is estimated, using as the indicator of interest the statistics of Internet queries on Google Trends and Yandex Wordstat, and as an indicator of the distance the “cultural distance” between the countries, calculated basing on Hofstede’s indices. It is shown that the level of social security for Russia is maximal in relation to the SCO countries and minimal in relation to the “West World” countries. Herewith Russian’s interest is strongest for the group of geopolitical rivals (the “West World”) and is moderate for the friendly countries (BRICS and SCO). The marginal interest in countries monotonically decreases with the growth of tourist flows to them (as a proxy-variable of saturation of information or experience about them). Finally, the inverse dependence of Russians’ interest for countries on their “cultural distance” with Russia in the “West World” – “Global South” – other countries’ system is demonstrated.