A sociologist on Ukrainian society under war conditions

An interview by Academician Volodymyr Semynozhenko with the Director of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, Corresponding Member of the NAS of Ukraine, Professor Yevhen Golovakha has been published on YouTube in the programme of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine “About Science. Competently”.

Observing that his guest, as the head of the country's principal academic sociological institution, is immersed in the research not only of his own team but of other Ukrainian sociologists, the presenter opened the conversation by asking him to assess the sociological “portrait” of the average Ukrainian. In reply Yevhen Golovakha proposed assessing this typical Ukrainian not only in sociological but also in psychological terms and across three time frames: before the war, in the first year of the war and now.

The sociologist called the last survey before the full-scale invasion a happy chance, since it was conducted in December 2021 and thus provided the freshest pre-war data. The Institute then compared these figures with the data of the summer of 2022 and the summer of 2024. (It should be noted, incidentally, that all these and the preceding surveys over 30 years have been conducted by the Institute under the programme “Ukrainian Monitoring”, which will continue.)

Strange as it may seem, the founder of “Ukrainian Monitoring” stressed, comparative analysis shows that Ukrainians now feel better than they did before the full-scale invasion at the end of 2021. Ukrainians' assessment of the economy, for instance, began 30 years ago at an extremely low 1.5, grew very slowly over a decade to only 3.7 in 2021, and this year, despite the loss of territory and all the difficulties of the war, their assessment of the economy is 4.3 (in 2022 it was the highest of all — 4.7).

The picture with assessments of the authorities is similar. Today Ukrainians rate the authorities noticeably higher than before the invasion, though somewhat more realistically than in 2022. The same tendency holds for assessments of every aspect of the present. Yevhen Golovakha called today's Ukrainian a stern realist who assesses the state of affairs soberly. Fluctuations of mood — fear, doubt, optimism and so on — are noticed by sociologists, and they depend on how things are going, especially at the front, since we live in a regime of losses.

Ukrainians' values, by contrast, are considerably more stable. Moreover, a convergence has been recorded in the geopolitical and linguistic-cultural conceptions of the residents of Ukraine's various regions — most Ukrainians see our future in the European Union and NATO; the leap was especially explosive in 2022, when people saw what the occupiers, the bearers of the so-called “Russian world”, actually are.

For Ukrainians freedom is a very great value.

The interlocutors discussed a number of further pressing problems, which Yevhen Golovakha analysed on the basis of the research not only of the leading academic institute he heads but also of other Ukrainian colleagues.

The presenter asked his guest to characterise the difficult tendencies that this stern Ukrainian realist perceives and assesses in various ways. To this the sociologist stressed: to change mass attitudes and increase people's optimism, Ukraine needs successes — military, economic and administrative. Then optimism will grow and Ukrainians' values will be strengthened.

Commenting on the indicator of society's fatigue with the war — currently 17% — the presenter asked how objective sociologists' assessments are. To this Yevhen Golovakha, referring in particular to the research of the well-known Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Paniotto, stressed that frank answers to sensitive questions can be obtained, albeit with small deviations, because Ukrainians, first, are practically unafraid of frankness, and second, sociologists have their own methods for checking the truthfulness and reliability of respondents' answers. What is encouraging is that most Ukrainians are prepared to endure the hardships of war and are holding on.

Academician Semynozhenko warmly thanked his guest for his thorough answers, wished sociologists success, stressed the importance of their research and expressed the wish that the theme of their next meeting should be Ukrainians' dreams and conceptions of a future Ukraine. The head of the country's principal academic sociological institute, Professor Yevhen Golovakha, readily supported both the theme and the proposal of a next meeting.

Read in full here:

Watch the video on YouTube