Yevhen Golovakha on public attitudes and the emotional drama of 2025

The Friedrich Ebert Foundation, established exactly 100 years ago, is Germany's oldest political foundation, committed to such ideals and values as freedom, justice and solidarity. Acting on its principle of providing a platform for the exchange of ideas and strategies among politicians and experts, the Foundation invited the Director of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine, Corresponding Member of the NAS of Ukraine, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, Professor Yevhen Golovakha to speak, and published an extensive interview with him under the headline “2025 will be a year of emotional drama for Ukraine”.

The journalist Oleksandra Horchynska, recalling that her interlocutor had called 2022 a period of unrealistic optimism and of that first shock enthusiasm, 2023 a year of moderate optimism and 2024 a year of stern realism, asked: what will 2025 be for Ukraine?

Applying the method of extrapolation, the scholar hypothesised that the current year ought to become a year of emotional drama — that is, of a shift from the largely positive emotions Ukrainians feel about the country's future towards fairly sceptical assessments. Most Ukrainians nevertheless live in hope of a better future for Ukraine, with faith in our victory in this terrible war and with optimism, since the resilience of Ukrainians, now one of the most popular categories in sociology, has proved very high: for three years we have been overcoming the difficulties we face. Important components of resilience as such are emotional state, the capacity to unite with other people and the capacity to act. We have problems, but Ukrainians are also demonstrating an ability to hold on, as the research of the flagship of Ukraine's academic sociology — our Institute of Sociology — and of other survey centres confirms.

The sociologist warned, however, that external circumstances, and partners and enemies in particular, may substantially affect the situation in Ukraine one way or the other.

The journalist noted that campaigns to support mental health are now unfolding actively in Ukraine — for instance the all-Ukrainian mental health programme “How are you?”, launched on the initiative of First Lady Olena Zelenska, and helplines run by the Ministry of Health and by civic organisations — and asked her interlocutor: “How developed, in your view, is the culture of working with psychologists and psychotherapists in Ukraine today?”

To this question Yevhen Golovakha, a psychologist by his original training, replied with expertise: “Unfortunately, historically, since Soviet times, we have had no system of mass work with people where the correction of psychological states is concerned… So today the need for psychological services in Ukraine has grown greatly. One of our studies shows that before the full-scale war we had 12 per cent of people in a state of distress. Now it is 27 per cent. Sadly, the proportion of such people will probably grow with each year. Ukrainians are losing their homes, their work and their loved ones and are forced to emigrate. And migrants are the ones who need psychological help most of all.

So psychology is now in the trends.

The interviewer asked: “How do the stresses and traumas connected with the war affect the population's overall capacity for work and productivity?” The scholar stressed that, since a person in a state of distress loses the capacity to work and the ability to overcome real difficulties, this social problem must be addressed at the level of the state. This concerns the army as well, because the chaplaincy service that exists there now is a good thing, yet in today's egalitarian world most people still need help from specialists — psychologists.

The same applies to children. The professor recalled his experience of a comprehensive study of the health and psychological state of children born a year before and a year after the Chornobyl disaster. Children from families evacuated from the Chornobyl zone differed in psychological state from children who lived in stable conditions. Second-hand experience had a great effect on them — not so great as to prevent them from living once they grew up, but it left its mark on their psychological state. And a great many children in Ukraine today have second-hand experience of war: they may live in towns and villages where there was no active fighting, yet they hear others talking and see the losses. They consume information through television and the internet — all the events around them have a great effect on them. To say nothing of those children who experienced the war directly, lost their relatives and so on — that is a terrible trauma. Here too the work of psychologists is needed.

The Foundation was interested in whether Ukrainian society can really be assessed as rather divided and polarised. Drawing on the research of the Institute and, more broadly, of the country's survey centres, the Institute's head stressed: “Before 2022 there were many factors in Ukraine that potentially divided the population in political views, cultural preferences and so on. But it is also interesting that it was 2022 that brought about the overcoming of our main divergence — the orientation towards a western or an eastern vector of Ukraine's development. And that divergence began to be overcome from 2014.

A very important factor in Ukrainians' consolidation was the final choice of a vector of development: our society now knows exactly where it must go. In 2022 Ukraine began to be perceived as a country capable of very serious social breakthroughs. Ukrainians even began to rate our economy more highly than before the war, although by then almost a third of it had been lost. Research revealed that Ukraine is more socially powerful than Ukrainians themselves had previously believed.

On the potential lines of division in the country the sociologist observed: “Our research does not show a level of tension along these potential lines of division that could lead to social conflicts. Questions about mobilisation and about the display of so-called vertical solidarity, in which representatives of the elite are the first to go and defend the homeland, undoubtedly exist, however.

Trust in the president and in the other branches of government, more than five years after their election and despite a certain decline, remains fairly high. And for Ukraine that is a rare phenomenon.

On the forecast demographic crisis the sociologist offered his own supposition: after the war between 30 and 50 per cent of refugees may return to Ukraine. But that percentage will depend on state policy. Ukraine already has a Ministry of National Unity, which is to deal directly with this problem.

Another factor pushing Ukrainians ideologically to the right is the idea of preserving their national identity. Hence such strands of political life as national democracy and nationalism. Whereas before the full-scale war nationalism in Ukraine was supported by 3 — at most 4 — per cent of the population, it is now 17 per cent. In wartime that is natural. Yet the most popular current is still the national-democratic one: almost a quarter of the country's population holds that position. Liberals have grown substantially more numerous in Ukraine — about 10 per cent. In my view, Yevhen Golovakha said, that is a good thing, since such figures bring us closer to the developed democratic states.

The Foundation thanked the head of Ukraine's academic sociology for the conversation and praised the systematic research work of the country's specialists in the difficult conditions of a three-year war.

The full material is here: https://www.ipg-journal.io/ua/rubriki/intervju/2025-i-stane-dlja-ukrajini-rokom-emociinogo-dramatizmu-2437/