Anna Andreenkova

This article includes the analysis of similarities, differences and changes of social attitudes of Europeans based on eight rounds of European Social Survey (ESS) conducted bi-annually in 2002–2016. The data of this cross-national comparative survey shows that in the recent decades the general indicators of personal and social wellbeing, interpersonal trust, confidence to political institutions, evaluations of material wellbeing, self-rated health and physical safety gradually increased. However the differences between countries and subregions in Europe persist and the scope of these differences is rather large, the division of Europe in two axes East–West and North–South remains significant, Europe is still not united in people’s attitudes and assessments. Economic crisis of 2006–2010 had serious impact on attitudes of Europeans toward the performance of government and public institutions, political system in general, on the satisfaction with life and some other indicators. However in most countries except of South Europe negative changes were temporal and most indicators return to the previous level rather quickly. The impact on economic crisis on basic social attitudes and opinion of people in Russia was weaker than in the rest of Europe – positive trends continued uninterrupted till 2014 but turned to negative since then. How stable this change and whether the positive trends in social attitudes will return to the previous level or continue to decline can be seen only when new data of ESS will be collected and released.