Psychology of Mass Public Events in Modern Russia

Last year was marked by an extraordinary rise of social activity in Russia mass movements, marches and rallies. The subject of all these events was the crowd. Putting aside the question of the political content of these events, the author analyzes the social and psychological essence of mass action. What are the social and psychological characteristics of the modern crowd? Is it still impulsive, suggestible and irrational as it was described a hundred years ago by the classical author of social psychology, Gustave Le Bon? Has anything changed? What is the public opinion on the modern mass public events? The article contains the results of the socio-psychological study aimed at answering these questions. Based on the classic characteristics of the crowd, presented in Le Bon theory, the author developed a questionnaire, including 11 bipolar scales. The survey was conducted in a selection consisting of two groups of respondents. The first group consisted of participants of the meetings held in Moscow during the year 2012, i.e. 290 respondents. The second group of respondents included police officers, who were present at the events to ensure safety 27 people. The study has shown that the psychological portrait of the modern mass phenomenon is very different from that of the 19th century, the chaotic, impulsive, irrational crowd, which image was created by G. Le Bon in his book and which has become a pattern and stereotype of public perception of mass phenomena. Apart from the comparison of the modern crowd with the Le Bon crowd , performed in this paper, of particular interest are the results of the comparative analysis of mass phenomenon perception by its participants and guards.