Democratization in the Ukraine under Conditions of Post-Totalitarian Anomie

Abstract

Post-totalitarian anomie in the Ukraine threatens the realization of basic democratic goals, such as social transformation. There is a serious danger if the Ukraine again goes down the totalitarian path toward the sole obsessive goals of ‘equality’ and economic ‘fairness’. The population is tired of further social experiments, angry with their worsening life situations, and perceive themselves as unprotected in an insecure atmosphere of normlessness. If the people’s living standards further decrease, this will produce nostalgia for the ‘good old times’ of barrack socialism.

Our studies indicate that the dominant mass consciousness prefers the ‘equality of poverty’. This is a specific feature of mass psychology and consciousness (which politicians help to promote); it produces ‘social helplessness’ rooted in totalitarian state paternalism and a post-totalitarian ambivalence about one’s personal consciousness. These results of post-totalitarian anomie are considered in this chapter in the context of a problem for democratic social development which, itself, must be solved/resolved.

Postcommunist society still requires a number of preconditions to preserve elements of a rudimentary democracy within the confines of the present authoritative political regime, a state economic monopoly, and propagation of an archaic national ideology. From the viewpoint of progress in the field of human rights protection, the task at hand is not merely to protest some particular cases of state restrictions on individual rights and liberties with the purpose being to focus public attention on restoring the violated rights, but rather to actively develop a strategy advocating broader human rights for all as well as human personality rights. Post-totalitarian social development requires a) general principles of democratic state policy and civic society to increasingly protect the public; b) a program for legal consciousness development (for both citizens and public authorities), including elements of legal education and political socialization to spur democratic civic consciousness; and c) principles and means for harmonious ethnic relations, national tolerance, and maintenance of international peace.