PERCEPTION PECULIARITIES OF RUSSIANS BY UKRAINIANS AND POLES

Abstract

The article is focused on studying the perception peculiarities of Russians by Ukrainians and Poles. Ukrainian and Polish mass media flourished with articles of Russian Federation hostile attitude towards Ukraine and Poland over the past few years. Active political events in mass media highlight the emotional assertion, issues of daily news and, in one way or another, influence on Ukrainians and Poles attitude to the representatives of the Russian ethnic group. The research of representatives perceptions of both ethnic groups about contemporary Russians will allow to understand the psychological component of the political process and to predict the peculiarities of interaction between the investigated ethnic groups. For the purpose of studying In order to study Ukrainians and Poles images about Russians in the context of the formation problem of ethnic stereotypes, a wide range of methods has been used: a demographic questionnaire (B. Pietrulewicz, J. Tivendell), experimental statistics (computation of average data, factorization of the obtained data using the program package STATISTIKA 6.0). Empirically, Russians in the minds of Polish ethnic group representatives are perceived as proud, believers, indifferent to critics, alike, biased to foreigners, etc. It is stated that representatives of the Ukrainian ethnic group perceive Russians as confident, proud, believers, indifferent to others, selfish, etc. Empirically, there was a general tendency to perceive the ethnic group of Russians in the same way by Ukrainians and Poles. Thus, it was stated that in the minds of Poles and Ukrainians, the image of Russians is formed by structures, which have a more negative orientation. This may be due to the peculiarities of the current political situation, including the conflict between Ukraine, Poland and Russia, which manifests itself in the military and information confrontation. As a result, this conflict is transposed into social and cultural spheres and leads to the formation of negative heterostereotypes in both ethnic groups. It can be argued that the perception of Russians by contemporary Ukrainians and Poles takes place within the framework of a modern political conflict, which contributes to the process of negative heterosterotypes formation based on the results.