Yevhen Golovakha on Ukraine's agency as a central figure in the struggle for the future of civilisation

An interview 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, the extremely popular video platform and social network, in the programme “Yellow Sneakers with Yuliia Borysko”, which has 173,000 subscribers.

In the format now in fashion of a walk through the city (choosing it, the scholar recalled the walks of Plato and Aristotle, joking that traditions must be kept up), the journalist put to the head of academic sociology a number of pressing questions that undoubtedly interest the Ukrainian public, and not only it.

Paradoxically, the journalist began with a conclusion, saying in the programme's trailer that after talking with Yevhen she personally felt at peace. Yet in Ukraine, sadly, peace is still far off and the enemy continues to torment our country. So there was plenty to talk about and in various contexts, since at the start of the conversation Yuliia Borysko said that she needed Yevhen Golovakha as a psychologist, a sociologist, a philosopher and… a stoic.

Responding to this, the scholar explained that stoicism is a teaching humanity worked out so that reasonable people should fear nothing and keep their dignity. He defined himself as a rationalist, which is what a scholar ought to be.

And immediately he received the journalist's first question: what is Ukrainian society in the 35th year of independence? In reply the Director of the Institute noted that it was precisely to answering this question that he had devoted his address at the recent ceremonial meeting of the Presidium of the NAS of Ukraine marking Independence Day: “What was Ukraine before 2021? It was a country with an undefined vector of development and an unfinished post-Soviet transit, with distrust of state institutions and a conviction that the driving social group in society was the mafia and crime, politicians and businesspeople. And now, according to the survey, people consider that in first place among the drivers of events are businesspeople, then servicemen, workers, farmers and the intelligentsia. That is, Ukrainians' conception of their own country has changed fundamentally.”

Referring to the test he developed of Ukraine's agency as Ukrainians themselves perceive it, the sociologist stressed that until 2021 many of us considered our country to lack agency, but as a result of the heroic struggle at the front and radical changes in Ukrainians' attitudes we now have a fundamentally different agency from before 2021. As the professor put it — a concentrated agency: “Ukraine is now a central figure in the struggle for the future of human civilisation. Everyone has to reckon with it.”

Having settled on a vector of development towards the EU and NATO from 2014, and definitively from 2022, Ukrainian society has moved from a democracy with elements of spontaneity to a formal democracy. A substantive democracy, though, is unfortunately not something we shall have soon, the scholar observed. Traditions and time are needed.

Later in the conversation the sociologist touched on questions of trust, social cynicism, double standards and the phenomenon of the amoral majority, recalled the first opinion polls in Ukraine and the research, in particular by N. V. Panina, into the psychological state of the population in a society undergoing transformation, noting that Ukraine has not yet overcome the problem of anomic demoralisation.

An important conclusion of sociological research, in the professor's view, is that despite all the difficulties Ukraine is not depressive in character: every fifth person thinks well of others, hope predominates and optimists have a chance, while trust is highest when there is a moral upsurge connected above all with successes at the front. And this at a time when, according to surveys, only 20% of Ukrainians have suffered no losses.

The two also touched on the painful subject of the factors that divide Ukrainians, among them mutual recriminations, the ways mobilisation is carried out, the adaptation of returning soldiers and of migrants, and the still-unresolved question of language.

An unexpected question from the presenter was this: what has surprised you in sociological research? The scholar's answer was no less original.

On the whole the conversation turned out to be interesting and informative, as the numerous comments under the video testify. For instance: “Thank you, Yuliia, for a wonderful ‘academic' walk with a wise stoic, thinker and scholar, with Mr Golovakha!”

The friendly tone, the ease of the conversation, the serious questions and the profound answers made this interview a gift to internet users. The human factor mattered too — the journalist relayed to her interlocutor what colleagues had said: “Light pours from your eyes.” Yevhen Golovakha was touched by this unexpected and sincere compliment, which added a drop of human warmth to a serious conversation.

Informing the public about the findings of sociological research and offering expert opinion on the pressing questions of the day is an important function of the country's scholars, as the head of Ukraine's academic sociology convincingly demonstrated, adding erudition and tolerance to scholarship.

As @LiudmylaDemchuk wrote in the comments: “Thank you for the joy of talking with an intelligent, decent person. Balm for the soul.”

The full material is here:

Watch the video on YouTube