Semantic structure of students’ representations of the historical guilt of Ukrainians

The aim of the research is to find out how Ukrainian students define the attitudes of Ukrainians to their historical guilt towards other peoples, as well as to determine the semantic parameters and structure of their representations. 78 students from three regions of Ukraine were surveyed. They developed a psychological typology of the attitudes of Ukrainians to recognition of their historical guilt in relation to other peoples. The received data were processed by means of the content, factor, and cluster analyses. Stating and interpretational vectors were the two most clearly identified semantic vectors in the students' attitudes. The stating vector deals with the issues of the awareness of guilt, the necessity of its recognition or denial, the need for objectivity and emotional impartiality of the pronounced judgments. Knowledge and lack of knowledge of history turned out to be a transitional link between the stating and interpretational vectors. Evaluation of the historical circumstances, citizens' political orientations and sociodemographic characteristics, psychological and ideological interpretation of the reasons for recognition or non-recognition of the historical guilt, and individual evaluative activity of the interpreters played the leading role in the interpretational context. The regional differences manifested themselves in the fact that the Central Ukrainian students attached greater importance to the knowledge of history. For the West Ukrainian students it was more important to have arguments to justify their culprit compatriots. The East Ukrainian students were more clearly oriented at their individual evaluative activity. The study revealed psychological differences in the assessment of guilt towards Poles and Jews. Recognition or denial of the guilt towards Poles appears to be a reaction to the political actualization of the relevant issues, while the attitude towards Jews mainly refers to the general world outlook stand of the citizens.