The new government has been given an advance in the form of high social expectations. According to a public opinion poll conducted by SOCIOPOLIS in March among 2,000 respondents, for the first time in the past 7 years there are twice as many optimists as pessimists. Asked whether they thought that current developments in Ukraine were going in the right or wrong direction, 49% of our compatriots said in the right one, 29% in the wrong one, and 22% were uncertain. SOCIOPOLIS has been asking this type of indicator question on a regular basis since 1999 in its quarterly surveys. Until recently, the answers offered little consolation. Nearly 17% of respondents said things were going the right way, while 70% were skeptical of the development vector the state has chosen. “Society is by no means in an upbeat mood: as a rule, for one respondent who thinks that Ukraine has chosen the right direction of development, there are three or four who hold the opposite view,” SOCIOPOLIS director Volodymyr Poltorak commented to The Day. “This situation is basically caused by very serious dissatisfaction with the living standards and poverty of the vast majority of the population, which had an impact on the overall — positive or negative — attitude to what was and will be going on in this country. The latest poll in mid- March shows an abrupt change in the situation, which means that this question is not so simple and that public discontent was caused not just by material hardships.”
For the sake of comparison, Mr. Poltorak cited the results of a poll conducted in September-October 2004. “When the presidential campaign was in full swing and the then premier and presidential candidate had raised pensions, the number of people who were satisfied with the chosen direction of development went up slightly (to 26%), but still the overwhelming majority of the respondents (59%) believed that the direction was wrong.
“It was not until March this year that the situation radically changed. Don’t forget that the poll was conducted ten days before the socially-oriented budgetary amendments were passed. So this was the first time that practically half the population thought that Ukraine was moving in the right direction. What is more, the number of Ukrainians who approve of the current vector of development has for the first time considerably (almost twice) surpassed the number of skeptics.
“The other results of our survey convincingly prove that most respondents, in determining their attitudes, were guided not just by improved prospects for their well-being, even though the ‘new government’ had not yet taken any real steps in this direction by the time the poll was conducted.”
Obviously, we are dealing here with socio-psychological inertia stemming from the Orange Revolution. People are waiting for rapid, spectacular and tangible changes. What is more, they believe in them.
