The results of the national poll “East-West. Ukraine in the eyes of Ukrainians” conducted by the Horshenin Kyiv Institute for Management Problems came as a surprise to specialists.
From Dec. 14 to 28, 2006, 2,012 respondents participated in the poll in 14 regions of the country. One of the sections in the questionnaire asked the participants to evaluate the level of culture and economic and political situation in Ukraine’s two biggest regions. It turned out that Easterners had a hard time evaluating the standard of living in Western Ukraine and vice versa. Lvivites, for example, have only a vague idea of the situation in Dnipropetrovsk.
Specialists believe that the results confirmed once again that the East-West opposition has been imposed by political forces. One is unconsciously afraid of the unknown, so Ukrainians are turning into soft clay in the hands of politicians. Psychologist Oleksandr Hubenko believes that the main cause behind the problem is the inflexibility of both sides whose interests are sometimes vastly different. According to Hubenko, using these differences political forces tried to play off East against West splitting the country into two warring camps. This may happen again unless some preventive measure are taken.
Specialist believe that the optimum solution of the situation would be to give representatives of the regions an opportunity to communicate more with each other. That is to say, joint cultural events are needed to break the ice of distrust, or as Kost Bondarenko, the director of the Horshenin Institute, put it, “to let a miner see a hutsul.”
“When the Orange team came to power, they had all the levers and an opportunity to somehow change the situation in the country. But they failed to take advantage of this,” says Oleksandr Hubenko. “It also should be stressed that as long as a politician’s main goal is to attain power rather than Ukraine’s welfare, results can only be achieved in some situations.” Sociologists agree — they stated that there are no divisions at the level of everyday consciousness or at the spiritual level, but they are thriving at the political level.
As the poll showed, 52 percent of respondents are proud of being Ukrainian, even though 21 percent found it difficult to answer this question and 26 percent answered negatively. It is primarily people between 25 and 45-47 who take pride in their ethnic origin. Volodymyr Popovych, the head of the Social Studies Department at the Horshenin Institute, attributes such a substantial difference to the fact that by and large the older generation remembers what stability is from the Soviet Union time (53 percent of the respondents believe that with the breakup of the USSR they lost stability and a sense of security about their future). “However, in any case one can anticipate a shift in people’s consciousness in approximately 10 to 15 years,” says Popovych.
The situation is further complicated by other factors such as Ukraine’s EU and NATO aspirations. Sociologists believe that at present the relationships between Ukraine’s East and West are being shaped by the country’s relations with Russia. The majority of the respondents (34 percent) believe that the entry into NATO will have a negative impact on our relations with this neighboring country — thus further hikes in gas and oil prices.
Sociologists point out that Ukrainians do not have a clear understanding of where the leaders are taking the country. The question “What is NATO to you?” turned out to be difficult to answer for one fourth of the respondents, while 27 percent said that this military bloc is a counterbalance to Russia and another 25 percent believe that it is an international military organization that promotes the defense of the participating countries from armed attacks.
Equally vague are Ukrainians’ notions of the EU. Less than a third said Ukraine’s entry into this organization will enable them to travel freely on the territory of Europe, while 24 percent said they are expecting only increases in energy prices and another 23 percent in prices for food. Only one fifth of the respondents believe that the accession to the EU will improve people’s standard of living and facilitate the protection of citizens’ rights and freedoms.
It is interesting that the distribution of law-abiding citizens does not have a correlation with the region they live in. “Financial well-being determines everything. The richer the people, the less they think they should abide by the laws of Ukraine. And so it turns out that the poor are law-abiding and that is actually why they are poor,” said Popovych in conclusion.
