Zelensky is a wartime leader, without doubt. Will he be able to become a leader of peacetime?

On 9 March 2023 the website «Ukrainska Pravda» published a long interview under the title «Zelensky is a wartime leader, without doubt. Will he be able to become a leader of peacetime? - sociologist Yevhen Holovakha».

In it the director of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine, corresponding member of the NAS of Ukraine, Prof. Ye. Holovakha presented the results of studies by the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine and, relying on them, drew attention to a number of fundamental propositions and conclusions:

1. There is at present no more anti-Soviet country than Ukraine, and moreover the Soviet element was squeezed out of us stage by stage.

2. The most astonishing fact: people assess the economic situation better in December 2022 than in November 2021. Even though we have lost almost a third of our GDP.

3. Given the situation, Ukrainians have moderated their material needs.

4. According to the test developed at our institute by deputy director Serhii Dembitskyi, the level of distress among Ukrainians has risen substantially. But Ukrainians nevertheless retain psychological resilience and endurance in life.

5. Three quarters believe that Ukraine will live better than it does now. Yet the year before last the moods were quite pessimistic – 40.5% believed that there would be no improvement at all.

6. Ukrainians need successes as an incentive to make enormous sacrifices.

7. Ukrainians have a historical safeguard against authoritarianism. We have no experience of building an authoritarian country, but we did have the experience of so-called military democracy, of the Cossack state.

8. In May 2022 we conducted a survey using the index of general attitudes towards the state – from distinctly negative to distinctly positive. If we compare 2021 with 2022, everything is excellent: the attitude towards the state has improved considerably.

9. We trust people rather than ideas; a nihilistic attitude towards the party system is an element of Ukrainians’ political culture.

10. European ideology is already very clearly tied to the name Zelensky. Before that, the ideology of change and of the renewal of the political elite was tied to it.

11. Ukrainians have not yet decided what to regard as victory

12. Only 10% of those surveyed are prepared to give up territory in order for hostilities to cease. So when Zelensky refuses to talk with Putin, this is not his whim – it is consolidated public opinion.

13. Our political values are different, and we can pull our social and everyday values along with them and move away from Russia in terms of values. When it is not security that interests us first of all, but the possibility of self-realisation and of a benevolent attitude towards others. That is the prospect we should have.