Yevhen Golovakha for the Kennan Institute: “In Ukraine people are keeping their resilience and their faith in something better”

A long and interesting interview with the Director of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine, Corresponding Member of the NAS of Ukraine, Doctor of Sociological Sciences, Professor Yevhen Golovakha under the title “For a Ukrainian, the alternative to democracy would be anarchy” has been published on the page of the Kennan Institute.

The blogger Saken Aimurzaev questioned his interlocutor in detail about the path of his development as a scholar, about his best-known work such as the psychological theory of time and the method of causometry, about his move from psychology to sociology, and about pressing questions of the present in the context of Russia's war against Ukraine.

Drawing on the research of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine, of Ukrainian sociologists generally and on his own investigations, the head of Ukraine's principal academic institute described in detail how, since the beginning of the 1990s, Ukrainian sociology has carried out a systematic, long-term study of Ukrainian society and continues to do so today, amid the ongoing war.

Asked by the blogger about the differences between Ukraine and Russia, Golovakha stressed that, despite a number of shared features, there is a key difference: Ukraine has no historical tradition of building autocracy. “Ukrainians simply do not know how to build a despotism.” The alternative to democracy in Ukraine may be not dictatorship but, possibly, anarchy resulting from the destruction of the social order. On the other hand, the sociologist stressed, the resource for resisting the aggressive despotism of the Russian Federation is not limitless, although Ukraine, with the help of foreign partners, is heroically holding the front.

As for the regional differences that have always been recorded in surveys, these, the scholar stressed, are conditioned by the historical fate of the different parts of Ukraine, and what was and remains decisive in their formation is not a purely ethnic but an ethnocultural factor, which affected the socialisation of young people and the attitudes of the residents of Ukraine's various regions. Under war conditions, moreover, the differences in Ukrainians' attitudes towards the authorities, the war, Russia, democracy and a whole range of important questions have narrowed considerably, so there can be no talk of any mental split.

For instance, about half of respondents and more (depending on the region) believe that the aim of the Russian war is the genocide of Ukrainians; and on European integration into the EU and NATO a consensus is taking shape, since amid a threat to Ukraine's very existence people seek protection — and mainly in a westward direction.

Two years after the invasion people are beginning to understand that the war will probably drag on; many Ukrainians (mainly women, children and pensioners) have relocated abroad, and in these new temporary diasporas distinctive processes are taking place which Ukrainian sociologists are trying to study as far as they can, and there are publications. But life has not frozen in Ukraine either — families are being formed, children are being born. That is a sign of the nation's vitality.

To the blogger's questions about language, mobilisation, trust in the authorities and fatigue with the war, about the emotions that dominate society and about the consequences of stress, the professor gave comprehensive answers, referring in particular to the research of the Institute's staff. Yevhen Golovakha summed up as follows: “All the surveys make clear that Ukrainians are not prepared to give up under any conditions. It is very important that an understanding should form in the world that Ukraine's enemy is dangerous for humanity too. It seems our allies are beginning to realise this more and more.”

Read in full here: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/dlya-ukrainca-alternativoy-demokratii-budet-anarkhiya