The Residents’ Attitudes of Vinnytsia Region in the Conditions of Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine (based on the Field Researches)

Abstract

The aim of the article is to study the social attitudes of the residents of Vinnytsia region in the conditions of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine according to data collected in the process of field research practice by students of the Faculty of History and educators of the Department of Culture, Methods of Teaching History and Special Historical Disciplines of Vinnytsia Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi State Pedagogical University in 2022. In addition, the article monitors the dynamics of worldview and behavioral attitudes during the Russian-Ukrainian war (2014-2022). The research methodology is based on a combination of general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, generalization, comparison) with the principles of historicism, systematicity, scientificity and verification. Research methodology is carried out in an interdisciplinary paradigm through the prism of field tools of data collection (observation, survey), sociological methods (statistical and content analysis), methods of visual anthropology (recording the interaction between the interviewee, the space and the researcher) and narrative as a discourse. The attention is focused on the structural methods and characteristics of narrative analysis, which made it possible to identify comprehensively the cognitive (thinking), content-semantic and motivational-pragmatic (behavioral) contexts of the residents’ social attitudes in the region in terms of methodology of the identities study. The scientific novelty of the research is to trace and record the social attitudes of the residents of Vinnytsia region in the conditions of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, to reveal the dynamics of these attitudes during 2014-2022, and for the first time to apply field material into ethnology by analyzing expectations and preparations for war; memories of the first days of the war; the features of life during the war; evaluations of the events of Euromaidan, the Revolution of Dignity, the annexation of Crimea, events in the East of Ukraine, the attitude towards internally displaced persons; towards Ukrainian citizens in the temporarily occupied territories; evaluations of the actions of the Ukrainian authorities/Armed Forces in countering the Russian invasion and the actions of the regional council/city authorities Vinnytsia regarding the protection of the region and the city, providing humanitarian aid, informing the population about dangers and what was happening on the front line, etc. Conclusions. The relevance of the outlined topic is important not only in scientific, but also in public discourse, since Russia’s full-scale invasion affected every Ukrainian citizen. There has been a qualitative breakdown in the perception of war in the classical dimension. Significant changes have taken place at different levels of identity formation (cognitive, moral-ethical, behavioral). This affected the interpretation and re-interpretation of oneself and others as representatives of society, region, ethnicity, nation, as well as increased the need to declare loudly and to represent clearly oneself as a national monolith in the fight against the enemy both within the country and in an international geopolitical arena.