Vashchynska I. Social identities and group loyalties in the contemporary Ukrainian society.

The thesis presents the sociological conceptualization of the phenomena “social identity” and “group loyalty” with their empirical approbation in the national, regional and temporal perspective. The socio-historical context of the formation and interaction of identities and loyalties of the citizens of Ukraine has been substantiated. The thesis presents the hierarchy of the most salience identities, in which sexual, family, local, regional and national identities occupy the first five positions. The ranking of the most regionalizable indicators, among which the first three stages were occupied by language attitudes and practices, has been determined. Thus, the lowest regionalizing potential belongs to the local and regional identities with appropriate loyalties, as well as to the loyalty to the representatives of the UOC-KP. The thesis proposes a map of Ukraine with seventeen regions in the perspective of 2013, 2015, 2017, based on indicators of the interaction of identities and loyalties. Five regions, out of seventeen, demonstrated a high level of integrity and a consistent grouping of the districts that were included: region №1 – Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Ternopil oblasts; region №2 – Volyn, Rivne oblasts; region №3 – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv oblasts; region №4 – Mykolaiv, Odesa oblasts; region №5 – Vinnytsia, Kyiv, Chernihiv oblasts. The remaining ten were manifested as regions-districts characterized by non-system clustering with adjacent districts. Kyiv occupied the position of a separate situational region with a median status. The ARC was referred to the category of a separate region as a result of its annexation by the Russian Federation.