In three years since the Euromaidan, what has changed among ordinary Ukrainians? What trends suggest the direction Ukrainian society is moving in? Recent polls provide some answers to these questions
Articles about how the convictions of Ukrainians have
changed since the events of 2013-2014, dividing Ukraine’s history into “before”
and “after,” appear with predictable regularity. One of the more obvious
consequences is the maps that sociologists use when presenting their results:
the labels “Northeast” and “Southwest” that divided Ukraine before have
disappeared entirely. “The concept of a Southeast is already a myth,” pollster
Yevhen Holovakha told The Ukrainian Week back in 2014. “At one time this made
sense, based on electoral and political orientations. Now, everything has
changed profoundly.”
Democracy vs authoritarianism
It’s three
years and already the question arises, have the changes that took place been
sustained, and where can they be seen? In June 2016, the Razumkov Center
published a large-scale study of the changes in self-identification among
Ukrainians called, “The identity of Ukrainian citizens under new circumstances:
current state, trends and regional differences.” The study was based on a
survey at the end of 2015 and a comparison with previous survey results.
One of the
driving factors that led to the Euromaidan’s Revolution of Dignity was
widespread anger at the use of force and the unwillingness of the Yanukovych
regime to take the public mood into account in its actions.
Afterwards, war
began with Russia. Visits to news sites during the Euromaidan and at the
beginning of the war broke all records. Because of this, Ukrainian society
became highly politicized. A survey by the Razumkov Center showed that 12% of
Ukrainians were very interested in politics and another 67% were somewhat
interested. Only 21% were completely uninterested.
A majority of those surveyed, 51%, defined democracy
as the most desirable form of government for Ukraine. But 18% were convinced
that an authoritarian regime might be acceptable under certain circumstances
and another 13% thought the question was meaningless. Still, the number of
supporters of the idea of democracy has grown since 2012, when they represented
47% of those surveyed, and the number of those who favored authoritarianism was
much higher, at 24%, while the share of those who were indifferent was 17%.
The share of
those who favor democratic values has grown, despite noisy debates and even the
occasional call for a “strong hand” to bring order under the current
circumstances. Yet when asked to assess the current government, few noted
serious changes. In 2012, at the peak of Viktor Yanukovych’s regime, Ukrainians
gave the government a 4.97 points, where 1 is dictatorship and 10 is democracy,
in December 2015 they gave the current government only 5.24 points.
The fading sovok
The pollsters
decided to also look at the way Ukrainians understand the values of equality
and freedom, the founding principles of democracy that are most popular in
Ukraine. At 54%, the concept of “equal opportunities for every individual to
develop their skills” was favored over the concept of “equal incomes and
standards of living,” which was preferred by 36% of those polled.
Still, more
Ukrainians, at 48%, said they would prefer to live in a society where the
government regulates everything but there aren’t major social gaps. Another 35%
preferred a society with individual freedom, where people were responsible for
and took care of themselves. The first of these indicators was seen as a
reflection of a tendency toward paternalism in Ukrainian society that remains
quite strong, even 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. To some
extent, this indicator flies in the face of the stereotype that western Ukraine
is populated by “Europeans,” while the east is dominated by homo sovieticus or “sovoks,” as they are popularly
called. The desire to hand over responsibility for a slew of areas in daily
life is high across all regions, although the gap between the two indicators
was a lot smaller in the West—44% to 40%.
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