I am a product of several interrelated, interdependent, interfering and interacting cultures - Ukrainian, Soviet, Russian, Kyivan. What are the differences between them and in what way the Ukrainian mentality is significant in keeping Russia under control?
Ukrainian being is practical, almost greedy and grabbling; it searches for comfort but is ready to work to attain to it; it is individualist, though concentrated not on oneself, but on a core family.
Soviet essence is "another brick in the wall", a part of the system, doing your job for common good; feeling proud of the community; feeling united against the enemy.
Russian entity is lazy, impractical, searching for excuses to do nothing, initiative; it needs strong leader and simplicity of ideas.
Kyivan kernel is a small, yet metropolitan city struggling to make itself part of global world while opposing the provincial values of other Ukrainian city; it is a capital that realizes itself being out of real world trends and determined to join the civilization.
Why is the psychology of the post-Soviet type important to understand?
This is the way to win over Russia, to keep it under control.
As of 2016, Russians are ready to destroy the whole world as the they disagree with so-called Western values.
As of 2016, Ukrainians still share large part of Soviet core mentality with Russians. Being able to comprehend their aspirations, having mutual past memory symbols, being fluent in Russian, we have the key means to access minds of Russians.
We are far from being the same; communist government tried to sketch the Soviet people, but it failed though that attempt left trace in post-Soviet minds. Each year the differences increase as Russia moved to folding the democracy and respect to human rights.
In 1990s Ukraine has shared much of the media space with Russia. Russian pop-culture, songs, TV-series, mass-read books in particular, influenced Ukrainians. The process continued in 2000s. Yet as the Internet became widely available since mid-2000s, the youth has discovered new world of current western entertainment which deepened the gap between the generations adding cultural aspect to it.
Much of a mess is introduced as Ukraine decides not to reject its Soviet
past. On the one hand, Ukrainians were huge part of the Soviet empire,
its builders; but on the other hand the were its victims.
As of 2016, fluency at least in English and good higher education are major preconditions of a person being completely free from Russian world influence, yet still aware of it.
