​Hostages of the image of the victim, or why Ukrainians are ready to vote for dictators

In the new broadcast of "Freudian Politics" "Apostrophe" decided to analyze not the presidential candidate, but the Ukrainian voter. We made a psychological portrait of the Ukraine’s inhabitant of together with the constant expert of the column, the political psychologist VALENTYN KIM.

In particular, the psychologist explained why we are ready to vote for dictators, why we love leaders, easily forgive thieves and understand corrupt officials, look for protection and why like children we are waiting for a "fair" president who will come and solve all our problems, including personal ones.

- What are the main characteristics of the Ukrainian voter can you can highlight?

- One of the most basic is the strive to populist politicians. The Ukrainian voter truly believes in any assurances and admonitions of obviously populist sense, and it, certainly, has a psychological background. Another key feature is total sacrifice: we try to present ourselves as people affected by something. In psychology, there is such a term as the Cartman triangle, there are three hypostases of human behavior - the role of the victim, the role of the pursuer and the role of the rescuer. So, the Ukrainian voter, who is the basis of the electoral process and should be a persecutor in relation to the policy, to demand something from him, actually acts from the position of the victim.

- There are features depending on locations. Why, for example, villagers go to the elections more often?

- This is due to the fact that the daily life of the Ukrainian voter is quite poor for events, and the election process is a bright event itself. And if a person lives in a village or a small town, where there are no concerts, where you can watch a blockbuster only in a month on TV, the elections themselves become an event.

In villages, in small towns for people it's brightness, it's a spectacle, and in the metropolis elections can not compete with a number of other events. There is quite a rich personal and family life: children need to be taken to studies, people visit friends. And elections are pus aside on the back burner. But if a person has beliefs, he will go to the elections. If a person does not have these beliefs, then it is likely that he will replace the campaign with the opportunity to take the girl to the cinema or go to rest. And this explains why the voters are mostly rural residents or residents of small towns, why more often they are elderly, not young people.

- It turns out, it's like an opportunity to be involved in something important, something that these people are basically deprived of.

- The old Roman principle "Panem et circenses!" continues to function. And the people who go to the elections get the show they wanted.

- Another interesting point: why do Ukrainians tend to idealize politicians and be disappointed in them so quickly?

- Partly this is due to our negative newcomers. We tend to idealize any leader who stands above us. Because it kept us alive. For quite a long time, during the twentieth century, "from my attitude to the leader who stands above me, much depended in many ways - will I survive or not, and latently I begin to idealistically treat the person who is in higher position."

Experiments were carried out, for example, on a troop of monkeys, where there is a very rigid hierarchical structure. If there is an overly tough alpha male, who begins to destroy everything, then after a while he does not face aggression, he faces love and reverence. This is a survival reaction: a person is much more comfortable to live when this person begins to love the leader, and not to criticize, because it is dangerous.

Such a behavioral mechanism affects people in difficult conditions. Throughout the twentieth century, we were under very difficult circumstances and had to love our leaders because those who did not love enough did not have a chance to survive. The habit of idealizing and loving the leader has been preserved and passed on to us.

It is significant that most often it occurs in the older generation, young people are no longer inclined to this idealization, they are more demanding, but the older generation is still idealizing.

Plus it is necessary to consider the peculiarity of the Ukrainian voter - we don't trust ideas, we trust people who declare some ideas. This is both strange and harmful, because personalities are of paramount importance to us. We see that now the main complaint against the current President are against him as an individual. The main message to those candidates who oppose him - Tymoshenko, Zelensky, Liashko – are against them as o persons, but not the ancestors of any political ideologies.

- It illustrates well the fact that Ukrainians do not follow the programs of the candidates any more, they follow people, the parties are mostly of individual leader type.

"Kiva will come and he will sort out the mess" – this is the quintessence of the essence of the Ukrainian voter: someone has to come and sort out the mess. This is partly due to the fact that we are not able to organize ourselves: we are not able to create workable institutions, we are not able to create workable relations even at our own level.

We know who is our President, what rascals are the deputies. But not many of us can answer the question - who represents their interests in local, city councils.

We are not interested in politics that directly concerns us, we are interested in global, large – scale politics. We cannot establish relations at our own level and, therefore, when we engage in high-level politics, we still have ordinary human reactions "we like – we do not like". Our election campaign is a war of personalities, not a war of ideologies. We do not pay attention to the rational component, we follow the emotions.

- Another point that characterizes us is that Ukrainians are ready to turn a blind eye to corruption scandals and vote all the same for those who are associated with them. Why?

- You know, a very simple answer will not work. The roots of corruption are not only in the law, not in the fact that those in power stole, but in the fact that the people themselves do not have antibodies that allow to fight corruption at the grassroots level. In fact, almost everybody is ready to give bribes, we often do not even call them bribes - this is a gift, this is gratitude, the person just gave a "hundred" to the doctor for the visit. Or people gave bribes to road officers earlier, there were only single people who never gave bribes to anybody and were afraid to break traffic rules.

This is partly because the laws themselves are not perfect. Initially, the legislation was designed in such a way so that the state and the laws that support it, stood in opposition to the citizens. And if you take the Old Russian or Horde principle of management, a person is subject to society, and society is subject to the state. If we take the European principles, they are quite different, there is the rule of law in relation to the individual, that is, the individual is above all: the protection of life, interests - is the base.

The old Horde principle that still rules our lives: cornerstone is the interest of the state. Therefore, as an ordinary person, the state constantly infringes me, because it forces me to submit, and accordingly my attitude to any state institutions is negative. I can't resist them, but I can bribe them. Everyone buys at their own level. Thus, when we see an official who stole, we understand him perfectly well, because this official did not come to us from space, he is from our environment, and we act in the same way, only we do it on a smaller scale. Therefore, the behavioral portrait of the official does not thrust us away.

- It turns out that we are waiting for the fulfillment of what we do not adhere to.

- There are formal relations with the state, that is, we must live in a state that will take care of us, "therefore, no one should demand bribes from me, but if I see that a bribe must be given, then I will give it." Not for money, some services are available through some acquaintance, and it's also illegal. Therefore, the Ukrainian society has a tolerance for bribery, and it will be present for a very long time - until conditions are created in which the individual ceases to perceive himself as a victim of the state, until people begin to be proud of themselves and stop treating themselves as a victim, until then bribery will exist in our country, and we will tolerate it.

- A Ukrainian is comfortable to be the victim, we got used to be humiliated and offended, and those candidates who skillfully feed it in us, will have success. Is it right?

- Yes, it is. Sacrifice is a very effective way of behaving. Throughout the twentieth century, and previous centuries including, survived those who obeyed. The system devoured and simply destroyed enterprising, active people with leadership potential. This happened to many generations. Respectively, who could survive? Those who obeyed the system. Another option - they themselves become the executioners, i.e. cogs in a wheel, they completely came to terms with it and demonstrated their inability to deal with it, their peacefulness towards it. This sacrificial behavior became normal because it provided an opportunity to survive.

This way of behavior was inherited during several generations in a row and it became fundamental. Now that we face the fact that we have freedom, we don't know what to do with it. Different politicians come to us and give different messages. One says, "We should be proud of ourselves." Yeah, we should be. And another one says, "We are the victims," and we say, "Yes, yes, it's about us!". "And you as victims have to be provided!” "Yes," we answer. And such a politician is gaining popularity, because the position of the victim gives us the right to inaction, gives us the right to something that does not depend on us and we are owed to - this is a very convenient position.

For a long time, the Soviet management model was based on it: we will take everything from you, and for this we will give you something. If you serve well, you'll get more, be good victims. And any politician who addresses this part of electoral thinking wins. Pity works well for people: "you are my poor and miserable" or "everybody cheats on us", "see, they are all rascals, I will come now and deprive all of them of parliamentary immunity". The victims need a protector, the victims need a father figure or a mother figure to take care of them.

- As to the image of the mother. We discussed it in the context of Tymoshenko, she exploits this image often, and it is very comfortable to many people - to feel helpless, to expect that "someone will come and everything will be resolved".

- Another model is applicable here, from the transactional analysis of Eric Berne's theory, where there is an inner child, an inner parent and an adult. A politician often takes the position of a caring parent who requires a reciprocal transaction - an obedient child. And we play the role of obedient children and wait for some adult to come, and this person will punish other bad children and adults, will return back the toys, set the rules, bad people will be put on a naughty step, and then everything will be fine.

That is, someone will come to solve our problems, so this feeling is often manipulated, and it works. But here we should not forget about the age composition of our population, because the phrase "inner child" may sound strange in relation to the grandmother, who is 70 years old, nevertheless, it is like this. But here the age structure shows that old people make up a rather massive group in our society which is already physically not capable of activity and they have no time to wait during 10-15 years while everything becomes well, they want it now. This category is focused on social subsidies, so any slogan like "I'll add you a thousand hryvnias to your pension" will be popular. And young people think differently: give us the opportunities. Remove restrictions, erase boundaries, give us the opportunity to do business.

- Although young people have their extremes, they often want everything here and now.

- That is true. It is quite difficult to work with our young people, because they are largely nihilists. This is partly characteristic of their age, partly - of education, because they were brought up by us - the older generation - in condition of disrespect for elders, disrespect for state institutions, because the state is bad.

Therefore, it is a big problem even to stop such people on the street and ask to answer the question. They do not want to waste time on uninteresting actions. Therefore, the elections where one has to come and stand in line is some kind of multi-level combination, and it is unacceptable for them, they dream of an electronic state: "I want to influence some processes without leaving home and without straining." Thus, we have two categories that have a strong dividing principle: one category - young people who do not want to strain, and the second - old people who are ready to strain and stand in lines. Which category will win? The second one, I guess.

- Many campaign teams count on the fact that Zelensky's electorate is young and won't come to elections just because of these reasons.

- Most likely, these are unreasonable expectations of those politicians who fight against Zelensky's phenomenon. He has a strong support among young people, but here we must understand that he is liked by elderly ladies, too. And here still it isn't known for whom elderly ladies will l vote: for Liashko with Tymoshenko or for Zelensky who suggests to do something together.