Thomas de Waal: What was the second question? And they did cry-you have to remember that the groups mostly consisted of women. Last year we had twenty focus groups with those resettled people in Volyn, and we were saying right from the get-go that everyone would start crying when we got to the second question. You understand that you’re a sociologist, and you’re alive, but you can’t hold yourself back and you start crying with them. People from Bucha were telling us in the focus groups about how they passed their children out through windows with missiles and tanks around. They are hard to do, especially when someone is suffering from serious trauma or has lost loved ones. We have been conducting in-depth interviews and focus groups. Also, you understand that now are dealing with migrants, those who left for Europe or somewhere else and those who are still here. So, to study something, we have to understand how much it has changed. We need to stop going to funerals, stop going crazy, stop being afraid of missiles. We are preoccupied with one thing now: we want victory. It makes no sense now to just ask people questions. We didn’t charge for our work as sociologists. It was our contribution, and we even did it for free. Many in Russia were saying that Odesa is waiting for Putin, the invasion, and a landing from the sea under the Russian flag. The poll from last year I was talking about was more of an experiment-more so we could tell the media that Odesa is not a Russian city than it was about collecting fully accurate data. If I’m paid and deliver results whose accuracy I can’t guarantee 100 percent, that will be unprofessional. That’s why nowadays we can’t conduct a classical representative poll in Odesa. Tetiana Krivosheya: Yes, this is a colossal challenge, and we still don’t know what to do about it. Tetiana Krivosheya is an associate professor at Odesa National University and head of sociological projects at the NGO Promotion of Intercultural Cooperation. We got 5,000 people, and then from that database, we pulled 1,000 who we believed to be representative to draw conclusions. We found respondents in Odesa-people who said that as Odesans, they were willing to take part in the study. We sent links, had chatbots-that’s also a method. Last year we ran a poll electronically, with the help of gadgets. On the other hand, it’s not just that our society has changed-we’ve changed as well. On the one hand, we’re sociologists and we need to be objective. It’s also hard for us emotionally, as human beings. They’ve been used quite frequently and successfully, and I believe they are fit for purpose today, especially when we are at war. So we don’t conduct surveys like that anymore. It’s not just me-many of my colleagues say the same thing. That’s how it worked, as far as quantitative research was concerned.īut now the situation has deteriorated to the point where I don’t believe in quantitative surveys. We were already quite disoriented, although we tried to rely on statistical data: on regional statistical bureaus, on voter data. Tetiana Krivosheya: Even before the war, we were in a difficult situation because the last census was taken back in 2001. How possible is it to conduct a serious poll? Thomas de Waal: Let’s start with challenges of being a sociologist, both in Ukraine and at the time of war. The conversation took place in Odesa in April 2023 and has been translated and condensed for clarity. She told him about what it means to be a sociologist in wartime, what has changed in Odesa and how the conflict has affected her not just professionally but personally. In April this year, he found her in very different circumstances. Tetiana and Thomas collaborated on a Carnegie Europe project on the multiethnic southern region of Bessarabia in 2017-18. She works for the National University and the NGO Promotion of Intercultural Cooperation. Tetiana Krivosheya is a sociologist from the Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Odesa.
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