Social capital is an important factor in social development and social integration in modern conditions. The author defines "social capital" macroeconomically — through the system of institutions and the institutional environment of functioning of the economy and society. The institutional environment connects individual social groups into a single society through a system of relations between them and forms the basis of social capital. The influence of legal, geographical and ethno-linguistic factors as well as cultural and historical peculiarities of the country and on the quality of the institutional environment and on the degree of development of social capital in Russia is shown.