NICOLAS HAYOZ, Doctor, Professor at the Department of European Studies and Slavic Studies, Faculty for Humanities, University of Fribourg (90, bd. de Pérolles, Fribourg (Switzerland), 1700)

nicolas.hayoz@unifr.ch

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6196-1011

VIKTOR STEPANENKO, Doctor of Sciences in Sociology, Chief Research Fellow at the Department of History and Theory of Sociology, Institute of Sociology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (12, Shovkovychna St., Kyiv (Ukraine), 01021)

vikstepa@i-soc.org.ua

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3623-0057

This paper aims to analyze how Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has changed Ukrainian and Russian societies. It looks at the social organization of war, at how Ukraine and Russia adapt and change under wartime conditions. Combining political science and sociological approaches, we interpret the war under organizational and communicative aspects in the context of opposite political regimes: dictatorial autocracy in Russia versus democracy in Ukraine. Opposite regimes imply opposite meanings and objectives of war, of warfare and the military. Big differences exist regarding organizing and mobilizing resources and support for the war — with considerable advantages for a dictatorship such as Russia controlling its societal space by the means of repression and propaganda. Societies at war need to be distinguished from an organized and highly militarized war society such as Russia which has imposed on its neighbor military, organizational and ideological constraints to which Ukraine must respond with its own militarization and organization of war and warfare. The social organization of war is understood as a complex multi-layered interplay of various institutional actors and spheres (the state, the military, NGOs, business, media, public and private spheres, etc.). Military mobilization in both societies also has different organizational and communicative effects as well as various, often contrasting, political, cultural and societal implications.

Keywords: war society, organizations, public mobilization, ‘frontier society’, state-society relations, ideological indoctrination, values, societal transformation

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Received 04.04.2025 Accepted for publication after review 15.04.2025 Published 2025

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The social organization of war: Ukrainian and Russian societies mobilized for war

stmm. 2025 (2): 30-58

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/sociology2025.02.030

Full text: https://stmm.in.ua/archive/ukr/2025-2/4.pdf