Popular science material by A. A. Bova, Candidate of Sociological Sciences: “The happiness of Ukrainians in wartime: how freedom, pride and solidarity become our armour”

The website of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine has published a popular science material by A. A. Bova, Candidate of Sociological Sciences, "The happiness of Ukrainians in wartime: how freedom, pride and solidarity become our armour"

Can one be happy when missiles fly overhead and the daily news brings pain? At first glance the very notion of happiness sits poorly with the realities of a full-scale war. Yet it is precisely at critical moments that subjective well-being ceases to be merely a measure of personal comfort. It becomes one of the indicators of a society's collective resilience and adaptive potential.

In contemporary research, happiness under war conditions is determined not only by a person's emotional experiences but also by a sense that life is meaningful, by social solidarity and by the ability to restore resources in a situation of prolonged stress. That is why, even amid constant threats and uncertainty, people can retain a positive attitude towards their own lives.

To see how this works in practice, we analysed the data of a nationwide survey conducted by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation and the Razumkov Centre at the end of 2024. The results show a trend that may seem unexpected. Despite the existential challenges of wartime, the overall level of happiness in Ukrainian society remains relatively high. In total, 62.3% of the 1,507 respondents identify themselves as happy (51.3% of them “rather happy” and 11.0% “very happy”). At the same time a third of respondents (33.9%) say they do not feel very happy, and only 3.9% declare a complete absence of happiness.

Such figures give grounds to suppose that there are resources which partly compensate for the psychological pressure of wartime.

For more detail see the full material.