Ukrinform's interview with Yevhen Golovakha

Ukrinform — the Ukrainian national news agency, which publishes some 500 news and analytical items daily in Ukrainian, English, Spanish, German, French, Polish and Japanese — has published an interview with the Director of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine, Corresponding Member of the NAS of Ukraine, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, Professor Ye. I. Golovakha.

The journalist Tetiana Nehoda opened the conversation by observing that Ukraine is losing its children and young people, who are leaving the country. Is there a limit to this process, and how long will it last?

Citing the view of Ukraine's demographers, the sociologist confirmed that the situation is very serious but not catastrophic. It calls for a long-term plan so that we prepare for the trials that will begin after the war ends. While it continues, the main problem is safety and survival. That is why mothers are taking their children abroad, and one can understand them. Even so, we must think about the near future. Sociologists have studied who states an intention to return, and whereas according to our data in 2022 there were 78% of them, now there are fewer than 50%. The real number will depend on many factors, as historical examples confirm. If the war in Ukraine goes on for another year or two, one may count on 30%. The professor stressed that he belongs to those experts who forecast that the war will end within a year or two. But the fact that 70% will remain abroad will not mean they are cut off. A connection with Ukraine will remain. So this should not be viewed as a tragedy. Colleagues in research who have left, for example, are now building contacts with the world scholarly community.

Since 2002 the European Social Survey has been conducted in the countries of Europe. Every two years surveys are carried out, and on their basis state strategies and social programmes are developed in the EU. The professor recalled: “In 2004, with the Institute of Sociology of the NAS, it took incredible difficulty to break in there through international organisations. Now they have asked us into that study themselves — the Kyiv School of Economics will be handling it.”

There is a term in sociology, the scholar recalled — social capital. It is what a person builds up in life as a professional and as a member of a community. People are judged by their social capital. Abroad, Ukrainians will acquire new skills and that capital will rise in value. And they may well return if there is a state programme for it. So the situation is difficult but not tragic. Europe's experience needs to be studied.

A human being is a highly adaptive creature, and so is society as a whole. According to UN forecasts, in 2100 Ukraine will have a population of 10–12 million; in 2050, about 20 million. Our demographers do not entirely agree with this. All these problems will have to be solved. Our enormous problem is resilience. It must be demonstrated above all by the elites, by their own example — both resilience and a willingness to defend. It is simply that a new elite is forming with great difficulty here. The old one was destroyed back in the 1920s and 1930s.

The business elite matters greatly for a nation, though the questions are addressed above all to the political, spiritual and scholarly elites. But if entrepreneurs are supported and create jobs, many of those displaced (in the first generation) with European experience will return to Ukraine even for lower pay.

Even in the first months of the invasion, though it was consistently frightening, not everyone left. People need to be informed better, and the decision to leave or to return should be taken not emotionally but soberly and rationally. Speaking of people, the word “everyone” can be used in only one case: everyone is different. Not everyone will take fright and think only of saving their life. Some will take fright and run. Others will say: yes, it is tragic, but I must stay here. Most people simply need objective information.

The bureaucracy's main task is to prepare the country for peacetime. And reforms must not be postponed, because by the time the peaceful process of rebuilding can begin we must already have a normal system of administration.

On the Ministry of Education's new programme of patriotic education: in wartime patriotic education is absolutely essential. If people do not regard the state and their independence as a value, what do they need it for? The scholar recalled that at the end of the 1980s he happened to take part in a meeting of the committee on political socialisation and political education of the International Political Science Association, held in Hungary. It turned out that they had programmes of political education in schools and universities — lectures, seminars, recommended reading. Everything needed to bring up the citizens of democratic countries properly. And that is Western society. So patriotic education should not be seen as bringing back the Soviet way. It is not the Soviet way, it is world practice. A citizen has to be educated. A person cannot become a full citizen without a special education. That is how it is all over the world.

The scholar emphasised Israel's experience, noting that it is invaluable for us — how to survive in a hostile environment. And to do so without losing one's love of life! They have no depression, and their standard of living is already higher than Europe's. To form a national backbone that would pull Ukraine along, as such a backbone pulls Israel along, not much is needed. A few per cent. The main thing is to lay down fair conditions. The first Israelis created a proper system of governance and, above all, the absolute independence of the courts. And citizens are confident that, should anything happen, they will find protection in court. That, incidentally, is how it was in America until recently… Where does this come from? They lived through the Holocaust and drew conclusions.

Ukrainians had their own Holocaust too — the Holodomor — yet they did not draw sufficient conclusions. Because the elite was communist, with all the consequences that follow. The Israeli elite, by contrast, was formed of ordinary people who came to build a state. There everyone was equal, with no aristocracy. And people rose solely by talent and ability. It was a kind of meritocracy — a system of governance in which power belongs to those who are most capable and deserve it, regardless of their social origin or financial status — and it bore fruit. And they built their own order on the best models. So let our schoolchildren be told about their Israeli peers. Who would never think of not joining the army. First you serve, and after three years you can do whatever you like.

This does not depend on ordinary Ukrainians alone; the state must set the tone. For that it need only study other countries' experience. We are not going to discover new rules. If people want to change something, that experience should be mentioned in the system of patriotic education. If Russia always stays as it is and does not renounce its claims on Ukraine, we shall be able to defend ourselves only with a generation educated in this way. Otherwise we shall simply disappear.

Society should not be underestimated. To this day 60% say they will be ready to endure any hardships for as long as necessary so as not to lose this war. There were, admittedly, 80% at the start, but one can understand people. In any case, those who are not prepared to endure at all are little more than 10%. There was another dreadful figure — that 46% do not condemn draft evaders. They condemn the enlistment offices, but not the evaders. And that is frightening.

The situation could be changed by such a miraculous remedy as a serious success at the front — the mood would soar at once. It happened before, when the Kharkiv region and Kherson were liberated. A comparable success is needed. An advance such as the one in the Kursk region, for instance, is not a success on that scale and did not produce a general upsurge. In the end we do not need the Kursk region. But we do need our Bakhmut, and our Melitopol too. Liberating them would have a lasting effect; people would be proud. And when the news is negative every day, it is hard to keep spirits up.

Ukraine will never be, and can never again be, what it was before the war, including in the composition of its population. The government's Strategy of Demographic Development to 2040 says that in 26 years it will fall to 25 million. Foreigners will probably be brought in to fill jobs. When people who have been through the war are surveyed, the overwhelming majority say they cannot rid themselves of the inner changes the war has caused. This does not mean that people will live badly.

Yevhen recalled that his mother went through the front in the Second World War and took three explosive bullets. She lived without a joint and had gas gangrene… She endured horrors. But she lived not by that but with it. And Ukrainian society will likewise live not by the war but with this war. And there is no escaping it for many, many generations ahead.

As for foreigners — we shall accept them, why not. Some will work and go home, some will settle. It is a normal process, contemporary world practice. As Academician Ella Libanova, an expert in demography and labour economics, once said in an interview — we are too used to living in a mono-ethnic environment among our kindred Eastern Slavs. We must get used to multi-ethnicity: that is how the whole world lives.

The interview showed that sociologists' point of view is of considerable social importance and is a contribution to informing Ukrainian society.

Photograph by Hennadii Minchenko, Ukrinform

The full material is here: https://www.ukrinform.ua/rubric-society/4012637-evgen-golovaha-direktor-institutu-sociologii-nan.html