"Ukraines European Discourse Does Not Correspond to Reality"
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- Published on Sunday, 03 May 2015 22:45
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1112 .... May 4, 2015
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"Ukraine’s European Discourse Does Not Correspond to Reality"
Interview with Volodymyr Ishchenko
Volodymyr Ishchenko is a sociologist studying social protests in Ukraine. He is the deputy director of the Center for Social and Labour Research, a member of the editorial board of Commons: Journal for Social Criticism and LeftEast web-magazine, and a lecturer at the Department of Sociology in the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
He was interviewed by Javier Morales, for the EurasiaNet website, where this article first appeared.
Javier Morales (JM): How do you think that the Ukrainian society is assessing the consequences of the Euromaidan revolution? Has there been any change in their attitudes in the past year?
Volodymyr Ishchenko (VI): Before the Maidan, polls showed that European integration and the... Russian customs union had almost an equal support, but there was of course a geographical divide between different parts of Ukraine in their answers. After the Maidan, what happened is probably a typical effect of the victory of political mobilization: the number of supporters for European integration grew a lot. At this moment, supporters for the Russian customs union are evidently a minority, much less than in late 2013.
However, attitudes toward the Maidan are determined by a variety of factors. You can have one attitude toward the protests, another one toward Yanukovych's removal from power, another one toward the current government and its policies... so it is quite complex. My own personal perception is that people are very much dissatisfied with the economic crisis and with government policies. So I am not so sure about the extent to which they support official propaganda, for example, about the "revolution of dignity."
One of the most significant figures is the level of support for Arseniy Yatsenyuk's party, the People's Front. It was the winner of the parliamentary elections, getting more votes than the Petro Poroshenko Bloc. But now, polls show that the People's Front has a support of about 5 to 7 per cent, not really more than the Right Sector, which has increased its support. In October the Right Sector got 2 per cent, but now they have 5 per cent -- if elections were held today, they quite probably would get into the parliament. Of course, that might be connected to dissatisfaction about the economic situation.
