THE DYNAMICS OF YOUNG CITIZENS’ IDENTITY DURING THE RUSSO-UKRAINIAN WAR

Abstract

The article is dealt with the results of an empirical online research conducted in March and April 2023 to study the dynamics of the personal and social identity of Ukrainian youth in military situation. The sample is represented by 769 students aged 17–35 (the vast majority are female) from all regions of Ukraine (“Center”, “West”, “East”, “South”, “North”). A modified version of the “Who am I?” technique by S. Olkhovetskyi was used as a diagnostic toolkit. Students were asked to give several options for answers to four questions: 1. Who was I before the war? 2. Who was I when the war first started? 3. Who am I now? 4. Who will I be in the future (after the war)? The results were processed by the frequency content analysis procedure. It was found that personal identity in the identity structure of Ukrainian youth is generally represented by emotional and volitional characteristics in dynamics, demographic (gender, age) and abstract (“person/personality”) characteristics, while social identity appears as self-identification with a certain social status and ethnic and political properties. It is also revealed that during everyday life conditions and at the beginning of the war the personal component prevails in the structure of identity. Instead, social identity takes priority in the situation of a protracted war. However, both identities have slightly difference in the image of the future Self that might indicate approximately the same reflected importance of the social Self and the personal Self for the youth. At the level of frequency indicators of the selected categories, the most significant changes were noticed in relation to the emotional characteristics and professional status. A certain increase in the national consciousness of Ukrainian citizens due to the war was also recorded.