Drawing a portrait of the average resident of Kyiv, as the capital’s sociologists and political strategists set about doing this recently at a roundtable called “The Average Resident of Kyiv: Who Is S/He?” is a fool’s errand because social and economic stratification of society and migration of Ukrainian citizens have left their mark.
Experts can only pinpoint certain characteristics of the majority of Kyiv residents, which are not germane to residents of other cities. Most residents of Kyiv are educated; therefore they are part of the category of intellectuals. They work in the non-material sphere; have a heightened level of demands (of everyone but not themselves); are dissatisfied with life (job, salary, leisure opportunities); low level of civic activity; and moderate xenophobia.
According to official data, 2.7 million people live in Kyiv (5 million, according to unofficial data) 80 percent of whom speak Russian, and 20 percent Ukrainian. At the same time, 60 percent are categorically against a second state language. Sociologists also say that at best one in seven residents of Kyiv was born in the city (at least the second generation).
THE ECONOMIC SITUATION AND PROBLEM OF XENOPHOBIA
Everyone knows that, from the economic standpoint, life in Kyiv is better than anywhere else in Ukraine. The average salary is over 300 dollars, and there are a lot of jobs. All you need is a willingness to work. Even the Kyiv Employment Service says that it has a lot of people on their books who are picky about jobs and don’t want to work for a low salary.
Nevertheless, sociologists say that Kyiv residents are constantly dissatisfied with their life. “When evaluating their economic situation, the percentage of Kyiv residents who say it is good (with all advantages) is no higher, if not lower, than anywhere else in Ukraine,” says the director of the Global Strategies Institute, Maksym Strikha. “Kyiv residents are accustomed to a certain living standard, and even in 1999 they could feel worse with a $500 monthly salary than residents of other oblast centers.”
According to recent sociological research, only 10 or 11 percent of Kyiv’s population is comprised of the middle class, which is supposed to be the core of society’s development and the class on which the government should rely. According to Mykhailo Churylov, president of the SOCIS center for social and political research, 15 percent of Kyiv residents belong to the middle class. Strangely enough, experts say, these people do not like to identify themselves as the middle class (so as not to broadcast their incomes).
Owing to the possibility of earning some money in the capital, people from all over Ukraine have been coming to Kyiv for at least the past 10 years. Some end up staying here permanently, others work seasonally, so this produces a mixed picture of Kyiv and gives rise to another question: xenophobia and tolerance to people of other nationalities. Oleh Pokalchuk, associate professor at the Institute of Social and Political Psychology, believes that Kyiv residents do not differ from other nationalities in this regard. “We have ordinary racism and xenophobia. But, as a rule, people are mostly afraid of those whom they know least. For example, residents of the Crimea do not like Poles, people in western Ukraine do not like Russians, even though there may not be any grounds for this,” he says.
It is difficult to count people from other regions who live in Kyiv because few of them admit to not having a residence permit. Here sociologists’ opinions differ: some say that there are more than a million of them, while others think the figure is closer to 2.5 million. Experts have noted that Kyiv residents have a rather loyal attitude to them as long as they don’t litter in building entrances, keep their rented apartments clean, and behave respectably in public places. “Just like any Londoner or Parisian, a Kyivite may treat the newcomers with some standoffishness, but one should not forget that these people are paying taxes to the municipal budget,” Strikha emphasizes.
Experts say that a storm of discontent was sparked by Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky’s plan to introduce “registration cards” for newcomers. They found their own explanation for this: the journalists who were writing on this topic were not Kyiv-born either.
CIVIC ACTIVITY
The Orange Revolution evoked such a wave of civic activity that nobody knows if such a phenomenon will ever be repeated, especially if we accept the statements of experts who call Kyivites inert and the kind of people who are always waiting for a handout. “People are waiting to be subsidized, there is no transformation in social conscience,” Kyiv-based political strategist Pavlo Karaichentsev says. “I will give you an example. There are many old houses in Voskresenka raion with horrible entrances, but the residents are doing nothing to carry out even cosmetic repairs, change the doors, or install intercom systems. People are waiting for the municipal authorities to move them.”
Another peculiar feature of the capital’s residents is that they hope that some “uncle” or “aunt” will solve their problems. (Actually, this is characteristic of Ukraine as a whole, with varying degrees.) Practically every resident of Kyiv equates power only with the mayor. “According to the research that we did before the 2006 elections, no resident of Kyiv could name the heads of the Raion Council, not to mention parliamentary candidates! Chernovetsky is the government,” says Churylov, who is exasperated by the low level of civic awareness.
But cooperation between the city’s community and the municipal government is only possible if there is cooperation with the raion government. Otherwise, it is only an imitation of cooperation. Thus, it turns out that the Municipal Council is tackling only those problems that have already “crawled out,” and it is not working on prevention. Moreover, in Kyiv, as well as in many other cities, most problems can be solved by taking the opinion of Kyiv residents into account, but nothing is being done.
Power changes in the capital, but problems remain — construction, litter, transportation, etc. Life has shown that nothing changed after Chernovetsky came to power. Actually, sociologists think it best not to discuss his rise to power because there are “too many secrets.” Churylov broaches one of them: Chernovetsky introduced a novelty into the electoral race — not to buy votes (food rations instead?) but territorial electoral commissions. Thus, it turns out that the Kyiv government is “self-sufficient.”
CULTURAL “POLICY” AND MENTALITY
As life has shown, the intelligentsia is the most active stratum in any society, but Kyiv has been strongly affected by “brain drain.” The losses are colossal, Strikha thinks. In his opinion, this is fostered by the lack of a proper policy on the part of the local authorities. “Professor Petrova, an artist whose illustrations have been purchased by the British (Museum) Library, phoned me recently,” he explained. “She complained about her studio being taken away. And what does any artist need for work? A studio! Studios of Kyiv’s artists are being taken a way en masse, contracts with artists are being broken, and businessmen are being ‘settled’ there. All this is done with the connivance of the municipal government. But a sad future awaits us if the only people who remain in Kyiv are those who sell things on Andriivsky uzviz, not those whose things are bought by the British Museum.”
Pokalchuk thinks that Kyiv has not formed its own urban culture yet because there are very few bearers of such a culture, and Kyiv is in the process of developing as a megalopolis. “Taking into account the inertness of Ukrainian psychology, I think that most Kyiv residents still have a provincial mentality. This is both good and bad. The plus of such a mentality is the appeal to categories of morality, the importance of family ties, while the minus is that people react slowly to change. They do not accept new things, and they are conceited. This is linked to communication and creates problems of imitation, i.e., people like to pretend: we have too many imitations passed off as reality.”
Experts also assert that Kyiv residents have a serious problem with self-identification, and they do not feel as though they are the masters of the city. In Karaichentsev’s opinion, for many residents of the capital their “Kyiv” is the raion where they were born and the community in which they grew up. “This is a person from the village.” At the same time, urbanization has positively affected the character of Kyiv residents: they make decisions quickly, they are more straightforward when communicating (pretending does not work in a megalopolis) open to change, and mobile.
Thus, the portrait of the average resident of Kyiv is a very vague, contradictory, and changeable thing. Clearly, this picture will be supplemented by new features and corrected by life. It would be a good thing if, in changing, they become more civically active. After all, everyone looks at the behavior, lifestyle, and activeness of the capital’s residents. It is a pity that there are no good examples.
