The staff of the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine congratulate Vil Savbanovych Bakirov on his 80th birthday

The staff of the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine congratulate on his glorious 80th birthday

Vil Savbanovych Bakirov

Doctor of Sociological Sciences, Professor, Academician of the NAS of Ukraine, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Higher School of Ukraine, laureate of the State Prize of Ukraine in Science and Technology, Honoured Worker of Science and Technology of Ukraine, President of the Sociological Association of Ukraine, Rector of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (1998–2021), Chief Research Fellow of the Department of Methodology and Methods of Sociology of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine

Dear Vil Savbanovych!

Our warmest congratulations and very best wishes to you — a landmark figure of Ukrainian sociology, an outstanding scholar with international recognition, an authoritative organiser of science and education in our independent state!

Colleagues, friends and students always feel the effect of your tireless creative energy as a reformer, of a strikingly hard-working, professionally productive and purposeful leader, a responsible and effective coordinator of any undertaking.

You are a figure of great scale, an exceptional personality, an unquestioned leader and an unsurpassed head of Ukrainian higher education and of the sociological community!

We are proud of the chance to be in the orbit of your intellectual power, your all-embracing humanity and openness, your high virtues, courage, strength, resolve, your ambitious conquest of summits and your striving for more. We consider it an honour and sincerely rejoice at your presence among the researchers of the Institute of Sociology!! We are happy to work with you!! We wish you great undertakings and breakthrough research in the field of academic sociology, fruitful activity, enthusiasm, inspiration, family well-being and vital energy! Many happy years!

The management and staff of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine

For many generations of researchers, the life and achievements of Vil Savbanovych Bakirov are of considerable interest and serve as a model to follow. His biography is closely interwoven with the history of the country and with the development of research and of the training of students, postgraduates and degree candidates. Let us travel the spaces of the internet and enrich ourselves with knowledge about this master of Ukrainian sociology.

The future President of the Sociological Association of Ukraine became fascinated with sociology in 1968, when, as a student of the Kharkiv Law Institute, he met Olena Oleksandrivna Yakuba — one of the founders of sociological science in Ukraine. In 1972 V. S. Bakirov became her postgraduate student, and in 1976 he defended his candidate's dissertation ahead of schedule on the topic “Social control as a regulator of social relations”.

From 1971 to 1982 he worked at the Department of Philosophy of the Kharkiv Institute of Radio Electronics. In 1982, at the invitation of O. O. Yakuba, Vil Savbanovych joined the Department of Sociology of the M. Gorky Kharkiv State University. In 1990–1994 he was dean of the first sociology faculty in Ukraine, created on his initiative — an extremely important stage in the institutionalisation of sociology.

In 1991 V. S. Bakirov defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic “Value consciousness as an object of sociological analysis (theoretical and methodological problems)”. In 1993 Vil Savbanovych organised and headed the Department of Social Technologies (today the Department of Applied Sociology and Social Communications). In 1993–1994 he lectured at the universities of Bologna and Padua and undertook a research placement at the sociology department of the University of California, San Diego.

From 1994 to 1996 V. S. Bakirov served as First Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs of Kharkiv State University.

In November 1998 Vil Savbanovych Bakirov was elected Rector of the M. Gorky Kharkiv State University (from 1999 — V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University). The university's staff re-elected V. S. Bakirov as Rector several times more, and he held the post for over 23 years — a unique longevity of fruitful work and significant achievement!

In 2006 V. S. Bakirov was elected Corresponding Member of the Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine, in 2009 Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and in 2012 Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Vil Savbanovych's fruitful work in education, research and public life has received well-deserved recognition in our country and far beyond it.

V. S. Bakirov is an honorary citizen of Kharkiv (2009), an honorary doctor of the M. P. Drahomanov Kyiv National Pedagogical University and of the O. Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University, Honoured Worker of Science and Technology of Ukraine (2001), Honoured Professor of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (2008), and a laureate of the State Prize of Ukraine in Science and Technology (2017).

Vil Savbanovych has been awarded the “Slobozhanska Slava” honorary distinction of the head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration; the distinctions of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine “Distinguished Educator of Ukraine” (2003), “Petro Mohyla” (2005) and “For Scientific Achievement” (2006); the K. D. Ushynskyi medal of the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine; the highest distinction of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences — the Marin Drinov medal on a ribbon (2005); the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, 5th class (2006); and the honorary distinction of the NAS of Ukraine “For Scientific Achievement” (2010). In 2016, by decision of the Board of the Sociological Association of Ukraine, V. S. Bakirov was awarded the Association's highest distinction — the B. Kistiakivskyi medal “For an outstanding contribution to the development of sociology”.

And in 2009 there came a stunning event that still delights not only the research community but the wider public and society as a whole: a planet was named after V. S. Bakirov — asteroid 18731 (Vil'bakirov) = 1998 KW7, discovered by the American astronomer of the Lowell Observatory Edward Bowell!

In 2007 Ukrainian sociologists elected V. S. Bakirov President of the Sociological Association of Ukraine. To this day he remains the unquestioned leader of a professional community of like-minded researchers united not only by their professional work but by sincere, friendly relations. The consolidated position of the Association's Board, whose members represent all the regions of Ukraine, including Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, found expression in the addresses of the Association's leadership, and of its head in particular, to President V. Yanukovych in connection with the tragic events of November 2013 and February 2014. The Sociological Association was the only research community in Ukraine that publicly stated its position on those events.

The work of the Association's regional branches and research committees was reinvigorated. Together with colleagues and students, V. S. Bakirov carried out a series of applied research projects aimed at improving local self-government and developing university democracy, student self-government and the labour market, and at the comparative analysis of living conditions, ways of life and the health of populations in post-Soviet countries (among them “Eurostudent”, an online survey of graduates of the sociology faculties and departments of Ukrainian universities, and the nationwide study “The reforms of Ukrainian higher education through the eyes of participants in the educational process”). On the initiative of the Association's Board and its President, congresses of the Association were held, along with numerous national and international conferences in Kharkiv and Kyiv, Lviv and Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa and Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Drohobych; the annual competition “Best young sociologist of the year” within the Panina Sociological Readings; and much else. The Schools of the Young Sociologist held in Lutsk and Drohobych, Zaporizhzhia and Uman, Cherkasy and Chernivtsi, Ivano-Frankivsk and Uzhhorod became notable events. V. S. Bakirov took part in almost all of these schools, and his master classes always aroused great interest among the participants.

V. S. Bakirov is active in research and teaching in higher education and productive in his work as a research scholar. He has published more than 250 scholarly and educational works.

V. S. Bakirov has substantially enriched the theoretical and methodological principles of the sociological analysis of value consciousness, studied in depth the features of its main historical forms, and shown that post-industrial society not only changes the content of value conceptions but also radically transforms the very way they are produced, actively drawing actors into the process of value self-determination.

Professor V. S. Bakirov is the author of a series of works offering an in-depth sociological and political analysis of cultural and institutional change in post-Soviet Ukraine. In particular, he has shown that the transformation model which took shape in Ukrainian society as early as the first stage of the post-Soviet transformation led to the privatisation of the state and the merging of power and property, which made real democratic reform harder to accomplish in the economy, in politics and in the social and humanitarian sphere alike.

V. S. Bakirov's research also focuses on the role of classical universities in the intellectual development of society and on the features of classical university education in the context of the challenges of globalisation. His works on the communicative paradigm of the development of university democracy, on innovation processes in higher education and on the information and communication technologies of higher education are widely known.

Academician V. S. Bakirov has also been productive during the hard times of the war. He has studied the sociological problems of the migration processes caused by the full-scale aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, with a view to adapting the migration block of questions within the “Ukrainian Society” monitoring survey so as to track migration indicators and the related indicators of intergroup relations and social interaction in detail; the problems of the transformation of educational practices in the information society and of social communications in a digital society; and the formation and social characteristics of the new Ukrainian diaspora. Together with the researchers of the Institute of Sociology, work has continued on developing a methodology and instruments for measuring sociological indicators of social change under conditions of transit; the sociocultural factors of Ukrainian national resilience have been studied.

Vil Savbanovych has also drafted and approved the regulatory documents governing the work of the President's Fund for the Support of Education, Science and Sport and introduced regulatory documents on securing the educational process and research under war conditions; taught the course “Contemporary social communications” for PhD candidates in sociology; served as the guarantor of the “Sociology” educational and research programme (at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University); coordinated the regional branches of the Sociological Association of Ukraine and organised conferences and professional development activities for the Association's members under war conditions; held, in 2025, the 5th Congress of the Association, “Society and sociology in an exponential world: research challenges, opportunities, prospects”, with more than 520 researchers from 20 countries taking part; and published the monograph “The information society: socioeconomic and sociocultural aspects” (co-authored), the textbook “Social communications in public life” (co-authored) and a great many other scholarly works.

In congratulating Vil Savbanovych on his anniversary, we wish him an active and creative longevity, an optimistic outlook, endurance and patience in these hard times of war, and an unshakeable faith in the bright future of Ukraine and of human civilisation! We value you! We honour you! We respect you!