Experts at the Sociology Institute of Ukraine’s National Academy of Science have completed the Ukraine-Europe series of research projects on the ways of life and mass consciousness of Ukrainians and Europeans. Yevhen Holovakha, deputy director of the institute, believes that these findings will help assess Ukraine’s place in Europe.
One of these studies was aimed at generalizing data that shows precisely how Ukrainian life values have changed over the past several years. Experts are of the opinion that lately Ukrainians have been less concerned about their daily bread and are paying more attention to the cultural realm and their own self-realization. Professor Anatolii Ruchka, senior research associate of the institute and author of the study Value Priority Dynamics of Ukrainian Citizens (1991-2006) says that prior to 2000 Ukrainians attached greater importance to material values (people were primarily concerned with their own and their families’ physical and material security). This is understandable, as there was poverty on a mass scale. Because of this, “survival values” were uppermost in the minds of 76 percent of respondents, says Ruchka. “Material values being increasingly uppermost on people’s minds were accompanied by a growing orientation toward traditionalist (vital, traditional, religious) values.”
After 2000 Ukrainian value orientations underwent noticeable changes. Experts began registering a drop in the survival values rate, as attested in 200__? by 59 percent of respondents. Although these values still occupy an important place in mass consciousness, their weight is not as indisputable as seven years ago; a drop in traditionalism affected all age groups in Ukraine, especially the younger generation. Experts believe that this transformation is the result of changes for the better in everyday life, higher pensions and wages, their regular payments, etc.
Over the past several years sociologists have recorded another kind of life value: compound value orientation. This is a synthesis of values, including survival and self-realization ones. Ruchka believes that the number of people that have this approach to life has increased twofold since 2000 (40 percent of Ukrainians). He is convinced that “its importance for the national social ethnos should be evaluated positively because compound value orientation - its supporters may be described as realists - more or less adequately corresponds to current social realities in Ukraine.”
Like most countries, Ukraine has another social stratum where self-realization values come first. These people are primarily concerned with developing their own creative potential; they strive to improve their inner world. For them an opportunity to do creative, research work, etc., is very important. According to experts, such idealists form about 1.5 percent of the population. However, researchers failed to establish the material status of this category or whether the formation of this world outlook depends on one’s economic situation. Experts at the Sociology Institute say there are considerably more such “postmaterialists” in the developed countries.
Another positive aspect that testifies to a degree of social evolution (however small) is the fact that liberal and democratic values have become more important within the Ukrainian community, namely national independence, democratic social progress, equal opportunities for all, personal independence, free enterprise, freedom of expression, etc. “This marks a significant trend in the Ukrainian mentality. On the one hand, it is a completely logical result of the social transformations in independent Ukraine. On the other, it points to the prospect of the growth of civic culture. This, in turn, is the sociocultural basis of a consolidated democracy,” says Ruchka.
