The Attitude of Ukrainian Student Youth Towards Democracy in Ukraine

Abstract

The young generation is often overlooked in scientific discourse, although it is the youth (students) who often play a leading role in political and social change in the country. One such case is Ukraine, where it is the young people who started the largest protests in the country's thirty-year independent history. The presented article is an attempt to characterize the Ukrainian generation of «freedom» (Marzęcki, 2020) (youth people born during the period of Ukrainian independence, that are not impact of authoritarian regime socialization) from a socio-political perspective. The main research goal of this article is an endeavour to fully understand, describe and explain the attitude of the young generation (students) towards democracy (the article also includes comparisons to polish youth). This specific objective was achieved by analysing survey data. On the other hand, specific issues and problems identified at the quantitative research stage were examined based on data collected during in-depth interviews with sixteen students in Ukraine. In this sense, a second important specific goal has been achieved, i.e. diagnosis, description and explanation of behavioural patterns (political activity) dominating the social consciousness of students, which are considered justified and effective in relation to the world of politics. Author himself, conducted qualitative (IDI – 16 respondents) and quantitative research (1043 surveys) on a representative group of youth respondents in Ukraine. Quantitative research has been conducted in fourteen universities, preserving the territorial diversification. The results contained in the summary of the article, however, are not very optimistic. It is safe to say that the democratic system is in crisis, and the revolutionary cycle is still probably not completed in Ukraine.

Untitled

“…While, for example, in Poland, the transformation was based on the Solidarity movement (Solidarnoњж), which included mostly workers and the opposition elite, in Polish east neighbour this role was played by young people. In the case of Ukraine, understanding students' motivations to act and the patterns they follow is more important than it might seem (Kamionka, 2020). Ukrainian specialist in modern history Oleksander Boyko rightly emphasizes that "the opposition was saved from a real political knockout at the end of 1990 by student youth, which a day later began their "revolution" (the day before, on October 1, 1990, the opposition announced that 25 million workers in Ukraine would go on strike, but indeed went only 10,000) (Boyko, 2003: 85).…”