Conflict thinking and conflict interaction: socio-psychological peculiarities of interaction between the military men and civilians

The article describes the main conflict attitudes and strategies of the conflict interaction, which occur between the civilians, military men and veterans. The findings of the empirical study enabled to identify the major zones of conflict interaction and the key conflict attitudes of the military men towards the civilians and those of the civilians to the military men. The outcomes of the focus group surveys prove a number of conclu-sions about the peculiarities of the conflicts that might occur between the individuals having experience of participation in military actions and civilians. The author states that the attitudes of the society to the war experience is characterized by stigmatization, glorification and a desire to separate military events and war experience from peaceful life. The military men believe that the civilians underestimate their experience, avoid discussions about the war, do not feel any threat and are not informed about the war. The article presents the main strategies of behavior of the civilians and military men in the conflict situations. The civilians are usually more active and employ a bigger number of possible conflict resolution strategies, but the military men more often manifest passive aggression and resort to avoidance. The main shared attitudes to the war among the military men and civilians are recognition of the military men and their role in the defense of the country, awareness of the need for mutual adaptation and adjustment to each other, recognition of misunderstandings and the need to find solutions. There is also a request for information and media literacy, clear “rules of the game” regarding the whole range of social interaction starting from the attitude of the state to the ATO participants and providing them with benefits to processing their passport applications. Both parties also share attitudes to conflicts, civil servants, role of the state and other issues. The author argues that the conflict between the war participants and civilians may be caused by different attitudes to the war experiences. Therefore, the description of the peculiarities of the experience of participation in the military actions has been provided.Special emphasis has been placed on its dual psychological nature, which is both traumatic and valuable. The key differences in the attitudes to that experience can be explained by the fact that for the civilians it is a traumatic experience that should not be encountered in the peaceful life, and for the military men it is a traumatic experience that has its value as the experience of an important phase of their life.