Political, socio-demographic and economic aspects of state instability as a factor of external influence in Ukraine: a sociological perspective
Authors: Gugnin Eduard 
Published: September 2020

The article describes the descriptive characteristics of demographic and economic factors of state weakening in their multicausal interactions, which is based on the analysis of empirical indicators of state instability of the demographic and economic sphere, proposed by the Peace Foundation and partial logical extrapolation of these indicators to the social reality of Ukraine. As a result of research the following conclusions are formulated. The analysis of the factors of weakening of the state power in Ukraine allows to carry out their conditional hierarchy which will be defined by features of a social-institutional and social-group profile of the Ukrainian society. It is stated that the weakening of state power over the past 5 years can be considered both as the root cause and as a consequence of external influence. At the same time, it was emphasized that the external influence on the functioning of state institutions, the economy, and the mass media took place at the start of Ukrainian independence. It is noted that at the level of a formal constitutional act Ukraine was declared an independent and sovereign state, in social practices one could observe an unspoken (shadow) restriction of sovereignty by the presence of infiltrated groups of influence of other states (including Russia, USA, EU countries) in parliament, bodies executive power in general and special services in particular. It is noted that their very presence, on the one hand, was a consequence of the instability of the borders of identity of the political space of Ukraine, its power and information depressurization, on the other hand - the weakness of cultural filters, which was expressed in cult attitude to actors of foreign origin.It is emphasized that these actors of external influence did not (and could not) have an interest in strengthening Ukrainian statehood, and therefore created a regime of ignorance and silence to solve a number of current problems and crises, from cultural to environmental. It is noted that at the same time, it is impossible to remove some responsibility for maintaining such a regime from ordinary citizens, who, as bearers of Soviet political culture, are accustomed to building relations with the state in the usual paternalistic format. It was stated that the consequences of covert external influence and its ignorance and tacit indulgence by the population were protest movements, which grew into the Orange Revolution of 2005 and the Revolution of Dignity of 2014.Attention is focused on the fact that the "coefficient of usefulness" of these events for Ukrainian society (except for the ruling elites) remains quite insignificant. Permanent fragmentation of state power and its delegitimization continue, crisis phenomena in the economy become more complicated and intensified, environmental problems are postponed, however, they steadily affect the creation of discontent groups. It is summarized that all this highlights the need for sociological reflection and implementation of management strategies to overcome the crisis, part of which is a multi-causal study of external influence on Ukraine, which has been the subject of analysis in this article and future publications.