Dynamics of the Long-Term Orientation in Russian Society Over the Past 100 years: Results of the Analysis of the Russian Subcorpus of Google Books Ngram

Methods of computational linguistics were used to study orientation towards long-term future as one of the characteristics of psychological state of society. Analysis of the dynamics of the use of nouns and verbs, which are semantic markers of long-term orientation, in Russian-language texts of the 20th-21st centuries was carried out. The analysis was performed employing the third version of the Russian subcorpus of Google Books Ngram presented in 2020. To identify the main trends in frequency of use of the corresponding phrases, methods of cluster analysis were employed. Our analysis shows that since the mid-1970s, the frequency of the nouns “planning”, “plan”, “forecasting” and “forecast” in combination with the adjective “long-term” has decreased. The frequency of use of verbs with the semantics of long-term planning had decreased from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, and then grew until 2018. Apparently, the revealed dynamics reflects the crisis of the planned economy, which led to the abandonment of long-term indicative planning. In addition, we have shown that since the 1960s, the frequency of use of verbs with the semantics of forecasting has been increasing, and the frequency of those with the semantics of hope, goal-setting and achievements has been decreasing. Positive correlation of linguistic markers of forecasting with the growth of the urban population, growth of per capita gross national income and overall life expectancy has been revealed. Prospects for further research in this area are outlined. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.