Ukraine’s Euromaidan and Revolution of Dignity, ten years later

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Acknowledgments

This special section is a collaborative product. Thanks are due in particular to our translators, Larysa Bilous, Jan Surer, and Lidia Wolanskij, for their careful yet swift work. Serhy Yekelchyk is to be credited for putting us in touch with the Maidan Museum’s staff and recommending pieces for translation. Piotr H. Kosicki and Guillaume Sauvé provided thoughtful and ever-gracious editorial assistance, while Sophie Clark, our production manager at Taylor & Francis, cheerfully minimized the impact of repeated delays. As always, deep gratitude is due to our anonymous reviewers, without whose selfless and hidden work this enterprise would have been impossible. The authors of this introduction would also like to thank Guillaume Sauvé and Serhy Yekelchyk for their comments on earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. For details of the agreement and a summary of other sources of popular discontent in 2013, see Yekelchyk, Ukraine, 93–94.

^2. Krapfl, “Discursive Constitution.”

^3. This periodization is inspired by, though it does not exactly duplicate, that of Kühn von Burgsdorff in “Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine.”

^4. Shore, Ukrainian Night, 32.

^5. On the contrast with the Orange Revolution of 2004, see Yekelchyk, Ukraine, 79–80.

^6. Interfax-Ukraine, “75 [sic] Were Injured.”

^7. Lesya Lepetun, quoted in Shevchenko, “Vox populi.”

^8. Patočka, Heretical Essays. Marci Shore makes the same point in Ukrainian Night, 107. The solidarity of the shaken had been a defining force in the revolutions of 1989 as well; see Krapfl, Revolution, 48–51, 83, 109.

^9. Olga Yermak, quoted in Shevchenko, “Vox populi.”

^10. On the semiotics of violence and revolution, see Krapfl, Revolution, 35–73.

^11. Grytsenko and Shevchenko, “Victims Describe Excessive”; Ukraïnska pravda, “Iatseniuk vvazhaie.”

^12. Tilly, European Revolutions, 10.

^13. Shevchenko and Goncharova, “Chief Prosecutor Pshonka.”

^14. Gorchinskaya and Grytsenko, “Opposition Rejects Yanukovych Offer.”

^15. Kyiv Post, “Opposition Leaders Call.”

^16. Gorchinskaya, “Government Threatens Force.”

^17. British Broadcasting Corporation, ”Ukraine Crisis: Timeline.”

^18. Wynnyckyj, Ukraine's Maidan, Russia's War, 129.

^19. Gorchinskaya et al., “Parliament Votes 328–0.”

^20. Gazeta.ua, ”Tsei den′.”

^21. Arendt, On Revolution.

^22. Compare Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class; and Krapfl, Revolution.

^23. Another example, which Alex Averbuch has discussed in a recent contribution to this journal, is Russophone writers in Ukraine. Averbuch, “Russophone Literature of Ukraine.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Krapfl

James Krapfl teaches modern European history at McGill University and is the editor of Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes. He is the author of the prize-winning book Revolution with a Human Face: Politics, Culture, and Community in Czechoslovakia, 1989–1992 and other works on central and eastern European cultural and intellectual history. Krapfl has served as a consultant for Global Affairs Canada and the US State Department, and recently he has been a regular speaker at workshops for EU managers on challenges facing the Union.

Elias Kühn von Burgsdorff

Elias Kühn von Burgsdorff serves as a speechwriter to President Ursula von der Leyen and has been a strategic foresight analyst for the European Commission since 2019. He earned his BA from McGill University, where in spring 2014 he authored “The Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine: Stages of the Maidan Movement and Why They Constitute a Revolution.” His MA is from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he developed his expertise in economic history.