Radicalized Europeans?

Abstract

Based on an original survey, the author examines the values of participants in the Euromaidan protest. He finds that the protestors’ values are much more comparable to those of the population of Western Europe and Scandinavia than to the general population of Ukraine. The protestors placed relatively high value on the common good and cared relatively little for personal achievement.

Notes

English translation © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text, “Radikalizirovannye evropeitsy? Tsennosti uchastnikov Evromaidana i perspektivy razvitiia obshchestva,” Forum noveishei vostochnoevropeiskoi istorii i kul'tury, 2014, no. 1, pp. 24–49. Available at www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/docs/forumruss21/03Schestakovskij.pdf.Translated by Stephen D. Shenfield. Notes have been renumbered for this edition.—Ed.

^1. I express my deep respect for and gratitude to all the colleagues who organized data collection and primary data analysis—in particular, Nadezhda Lintsova, Marta Naumova, and Dmitrii Karpenko. Maksim Rudnev made useful comments on one of the first drafts of the text. Of course, they bear no responsibility for any errors or inaccuracies in this article. The work was supported by an individual grant under the program “Social Transformations in the Borderland (Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova)” of the European University for the Humanities. This is a preliminary text. The final version of the article will be published in the next issue of the journal Perekrestki.

^2. S.H. Schwartz, “Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 1992, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 1–65.

^3. Ibid.

^4. Ibid.

^5. A. Bardi and S.H. Schwartz, “Values and Behavior: Strength and Structure of Relations,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2003, vol. 29, no. 10, pp. 1207–20.

^6. S. Schwartz and W. Bilsky, “Toward a Universal Psychological Structure of Human Values,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1987, vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 550–62.

^7. S.H. Schwartz, “An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values,” Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2012, vol. 2, no. 1.

^8. A more detailed description can be found in the works of V. Magun and R. Rudnev (V.S. Magun and M.G. Rudnev, “Zhiznennye tsennosti naseleniia Ukrainy: sravnenie s 23 drugimi evropeiskimi stranami. Stat'ia pervaia,” Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniia: Dannye. Analiz. Diskussii, 2007, vol. 89, no. 3, pp. 21–34) or of Schwartz himself (Schwartz, “An Overview”).

^9. According to the observed correlations, hedonism may be assigned either to the orientation toward self-enhancement or (more often) to the orientation toward openness to change.

^10. S.H. Schwartz, J. Cieciuch, M. Vecchione, E, Davidov, R. Fischer, C. Beierlein, and K. Demirutku, “Refining the Theory of Basic Individual Values,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012, vol. 103, no. 4, pp. 663–88.

^11. Ibid.; J. Cieciuch, E. Davidov, M. Vecchione, C. Beierlein, and S.H. Schwartz, “The Cross-National Invariance Properties of a New Scale to Measure 19 Basic Human Values: A Test Across Eight Countries,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2014, vol. 45, no. 5, pp. 764–76.

^12. E. Davidov, P. Schmidt, and S.H. Schwartz, “Bringing Values Back In: The Adequacy of the European Social Survey to Measure Values in 20 Countries,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 2008, vol. 72, no. 3, pp. 420–45; N.M. Lebedeva and A.N. Tatarko, Kul'tura kak faktor obshchestvennogo progressa (Moscow, 2009).

^13. Magun and Rudnev, “Zhiznennye tsennosti. Stat'ia pervaia”

^14. Ibid.

^15. V.S. Magun and M.G. Rudnev, “Zhiznennye tsennosti naseleniia Ukrainy: sravnenie s 23 drugimi evropeiskimi stranami. Stat'ia vtoraia,” Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniia: Dannye. Analiz. Diskussii, 2007, vol. 90, no. 4, pp. 39–52.

^16. “Maidan-2013: khto stoït’, chomu i za shcho?” Fond “Demokratichni initsiativi imeni Il'ka Kucheriva,” December 10, 2013 (www.dif.org.ua/ua/events/gvkrlgkaeths.htm, accessed April 22, 2014).

^17. “Marsh milliona: na Maidan vyshlo rekordnoe kolichestvo protestuiushchikh,” Liga.Novosti, December 8, 2013 (http://news.liga.net/news/politics/938536-marsh_milliona_na_maydan_vyshlo_rekordnoe_kolichestvo_protestuyushchikh.htm, accessed April 13, 2014); “Marsh mil'ioniv. ONLAIN,” Ukraïns'ka pravda, December 8, 2013 (www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2013/12/8/7005244, accessed April 13, 2014). In the light of available photographic and video material, the official statements by the Ministry of Internal Affairs that no more than 50,000 people were at the mass meeting cannot withstand criticism (see “Militsiia narakhuvala na Maidani lishe 50 tisiach,” Ukraïns'ka pravda, December 8, 2013 [www.pravda.com.ua/news/2013/12/8/7005417, accessed April 13, 2014]).

^18. According to the “Maidan-2013” study, for example, only 14 percent of respondents on the Maidan were willing to participate in the occupation of buildings and only 15 percent in the creation of armed detachments independent of the state authorities.

^19. Let us note that in the context of this article we are interested precisely in the absence of mass support for violent actions against representatives of the authorities and government buildings at the time of the survey. From this point of view it does not matter whether the assault on the Presidential Administration was a paid provocation, a spontaneous action by radicals, or some combination of the two.

^20. A more detailed description of the project and the data themselves can be found on the site of the European Social Survey (www.europeansocialsurvey.org, accessed April 28, 2014).

^21. The data were downloaded from www.europeansocialsurvey.org/download.html?file = ESS5e03_1&y = 2010 (accessed February 12, 2014).

^22. S.H. Schwartz, “A Theory of Cultural Value Orientations: Explication and Applications,” Comparative Sociology, 2006, vol. 5, nos. 2–3, pp. 137–82; R. Inglkhart and K. Vel'tsel’ [R. Inglehart and C. Welzel], Modernizatsiia, kul'turnye izmeneniia i demokratiia: Posledovatel'nost’ chelovecheskogo razvitiia (Moscow, 2011).

^23. Israel was also excluded from the analysis.

^24. The full set of questions is omitted in order to save space. A Russian-language or Ukrainian-language version of the questionnaire is available at www.europeansocialsurvey.org/data/country.html?c = ukraine (accessed April 28, 2014). Schwartz's methodology is reflected in questions GF1 and GF2.

^25. S. Schwartz, “Computing Scores for the 10 Human Values,” European Social Survey (www.europeansocialsurvey.org/docs/methodology/ESS1_human_values_scale.pdf, accessed April 28, 2014).

^26. J. Welkenhuysen, J. Billiet, and B. Cambré, “Adjustment for Acquiescence in the Assessment of the Construct Equivalence of Likert-Type Score Items,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2003, vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 702–22.

^27.Rozpodil postiinogo naseleniia Ukraïni za stattiu ta vikom stanom na 1 sichnia 2013 roku: Statistichnii Zbirnik (Kiev, 2013).

^28. V. Vorona and M. Shul'ga, eds., Ukraïns'ke suspil'stvo 1992–2012. Stan ta dinamika zmin. Sotsiologichnii monitoring (Kiev, 2012).

^29. According to data from the State Statistics Service, on January 1, 2013, city dwellers constituted 68.6 percent of the population age seventeen or older (Rozpodil postiinogo naseleniia).

^30. “Maidan-2013.”

^31.Rozpodil postiinogo naseleniia.

^32. The corresponding figures are omitted in order to save space. However, they can be supplied by the author upon request.

^* This was because only at the level of groups of countries was the sample size large enough for the difference to be found statistically significant. There was nothing contradictory about it.—Trans.

^34.ModernizatsiiaUkraïni—nash strategichnii vibir: Shchorichne Poslannia Prezidenta Ukraïni do Verkhovnoï Radi Ukraïni (Kiev, 2011).

^35. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Business, 2012).

^36. Ibid.

^37. E. Davidov, “A Cross-Country and Cross-Time Comparison of the Human Values Measurements with the Second Round of the European Social Survey,” Survey Research Methods, 2008, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 33–46; M.G. Rudnev, “Invariantnost’ izmereniia bazovykh tsennostei po metodike Shvartsa sredi russkoiazychnogo naseleniia chetyrekh stran,” Sotsiologiia: 4M, 2013, no. 37, pp. 7–38.

^38. G. Datler, W. Jagodzinski, and P. Schmidt, “Two Theories on the Test Bench: Internal and External Validity of the Theories of Ronald Inglehart and Shalom Schwartz,” Social Science Research, 2013, vol. 42, no. 3, pp. 906–25; G.V. Caprara, S. Schwartz, C. Capanna, M. Vecchione, and C. Barbaranelli, “Personality and Politics: Values, Traits, and Political Choice,” Political Psychology, 2006, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 1–28.

^39. R. Inglehart and W.E. Baker, “Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values,” American Sociological Review, 2000, vol. 65, no. 1, pp. 19–51.

^40. Inglkhart and Vel'tsel’, Modernizatsiia.

^41. For a survey of works on this theme and the authors’ own analysis, see H. Dobewall and M. Rudnev, “Common and Unique Features of Schwartz's and Inglehart's Value Theories at the Country and Individual Levels,” Cross-Cultural Research, 2014, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 45–77.

^42. With the issue thus posed, we should undoubtedly also speak of the parallel liberalization of nationalist discourse, an example being the way in which this same greeting was recontextualized.

^43. A. Portnov, “Ukrainskaia ‘Evrorevoliutsiia’: khronologiia i interpretatsii,” Forum noveishei vostochnoevropeiskoi istorii i kul'tury, 2013, no. 2, pp. 47–48. [The English translation is published in this issue of Russian Politics and Law.]