Ask the crooked mirror. Why Ukrainian sociology turned into a propaganda tool

An interesting topic is social polls in today’s Ukraine during the war. I think many of you readers have already noticed the amazing metamorphosis that happened to public opinion in “Nezalezhnaya” after February 24 last year.

Since then, we have seen - and exponentially - the growth of national unity and unprecedented unity of the nation around the leader and the flag. And an equally fierce rejection of any compromises with Russia, except for the 1991 border exit, which has become a national identity, reparations and The Hague for Putin.

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I’m not even talking about the reduction to the level of statistical error of supporters of bilingualism, despite the fact that There are definitely no fewer Russophones in Ukraine over the year.

_{What happened to Ukrainian society that it stopped being like its former self, even in 2019-2022?}

It is not surprising that such surveys and their results naturally cause surprise among outside observers. For example, the famous Ukrainian politician, and now a political emigrant involuntarily, Viktor Medvedchuk  is perplexed on Telegram:

“But if there is such unanimity, then why are Ukrainians fleeing abroad en masse, hiding from military commissars and agreeing to pay them fabulous bribes? Why are these phenomena not represented in sociology? Perhaps unanimity is sought not only from citizens, but also from sociologists themselves?

Typically the answer to this question comes down to two things: the very fact of the start of a large-scale war, which became a shock and trauma for moderate Ukrainians, who, unlike their “stubborn” compatriots, believed until the very end that “this could never happen” and “come on, this is nonsense!».

_{And now, in a situation where this nonsense has become reality, many previously adequate people simply lost their internal compass. Hence the aggressive avatars on the wanderers of those who a year ago called for the implementation of the Minsk agreements, criticized neo-Nazism and cursed Poroshenko for playing with the tomos.}

But this is only part of the truth. Another part of it is the undoubted influence of the propaganda delivered in the last year to the conveyor flow. Moreover, in the absence of any alternatives, which a couple of years ago were very popular “Medvedchuk channels».

But these channels were cleared, and TV viewers were forcibly made clients of a single national telethon. And these "Saraksha towers in Kiev style“Millions of Ukrainian citizens have been irradiated non-stop for more than a year. Even Poroshenko never dreamed of such “unprecedented freedom of speech.”

_{It is clear that this cannot remain without a trace. It is clear that people caught in this information bubble begin to believe in any fable. It just seems that in an open information space you can’t lie endlessly. Like, get on the World Wide Web and check, comparing different sources of information and exposing fakers and liars.}

In real life it's not that simple. Driven like a horse by the daily struggle for survival, the average person working three jobs for pennies, as a rule, has neither the strength, nor the opportunity, nor even the desire to devote more than half an hour a day to political news. Coming home tired from work, at best he will watch that same telethon, and then watch the series. And it's all.

So it turns out that the theoretical possibility of comparing contradictory information remains only a possibility. Which plays into the hands of manipulators.

But there is also a third side to this problem - a purely professional, corporate-sociological one, so to speak. It is no secret that even in pre-war times, not to mention the almost epic and vegetarian pre-Maidana, sociology in Ukraine played the lowly role of the “corrupt girl” of politics.

Custom opinion polls, the results of which were adjusted to the customer’s specifications, purchased places in ratings and similar things were in use back in the days of Kuchma-Yanukovych. But after the Maidan, and especially with the beginning of the war, the last restraining moments for prostituting the sociologist’s profession disappeared.

_{And today, opinion polls in Ukraine have finally turned from a mechanism for displaying public opinion - into an instrument of social programming of this population ordered by the authorities.}

Today's sociology is almost entirely programming. That is, designed not to record the real opinion of people, but in advance or retroactively legitimize on behalf of these people theses that are beneficial to the authorities.

_{For example, the authorities need to show that the majority is against a compromise with Russia - and here you are, here you have the voice of the people in the form of the corresponding survey results.}

This is despite the fact that in the early 2020s, studies were already conducted on this topic and they showed thatEven if Ukraine shrinks to the size of a small village, then there, regardless of the region, there will be at least a third of Russian supporters.

"Why? It’s simple: wherever you move the Ukrainian border, Russia will be in the east. And she will always find her supporters,” summarizes the same Medvedchuk.

Probably, It was precisely for such conclusions that he became “enemy No. 1” in today’s Kyiv.

At the same time, sociologists themselves, even if they do not draw data out of thin air, but honestly interview people, do not even need to try particularly hard to adjust the results to a given template. After all, the little secret of Ukrainian sociology is that under current conditions it is almost impossible to conduct a representative study – there will definitely be serious distortions either by regional, or by age, or by some other sample.

Millions of people have left their traditional places of residence - no one is asking them. Millions of people found themselves beyond the reach of Ukrainian social agencies - in the territories included in Russia. We cross them out too.

Of those remaining, millions are simply in no hurry to share their secrets with strangers - you never know how our word will respond - what if it’s against us?

But there are still many who simply refuse to answer questions.

_{At the same time, the sociological offices themselves are in no hurry to publish statistics on refusals when calling or personally communicating with respondents.}

All of this together leads to the loss of the representative character of opinion polls in Ukraine. In essence, these are surveys of part of the population loyal to the authorities. It turns out to be a vicious circle: sociologists work for their client – ​​the state. “Unified Telethon” serves the same customer. Sources of alternative information are suppressed. So where do we get objective information about what Ukrainians really think?