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The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution
A vivid and intimate account of the Ukrainian Revolution, the rare moment when the political became the existential
What is worth dying for? While the world watched the uprising on the Maidan as an episode in geopolitics, those in Ukraine during the extraordinary winter of 2013–14 lived the revolution as an existential transformation: the blurring of night and day, the loss of a sense of time, the sudden disappearance of fear, the imperative to make choices.
In this lyrical and intimate book, Marci Shore evokes the human face of the Ukrainian Revolution. Grounded in the true stories of activists and soldiers, parents and children, Shore’s book blends a narrative of suspenseful choices with a historian’s reflections on what revolution is and what it means. She gently sets her portraits of individual revolutionaries against the past as they understand it—and the future as they hope to make it. In so doing, she provides a lesson about human solidarity in a world, our world, where the boundary between reality and fiction is ever more effaced.
What is worth dying for? While the world watched the uprising on the Maidan as an episode in geopolitics, those in Ukraine during the extraordinary winter of 2013–14 lived the revolution as an existential transformation: the blurring of night and day, the loss of a sense of time, the sudden disappearance of fear, the imperative to make choices.
In this lyrical and intimate book, Marci Shore evokes the human face of the Ukrainian Revolution. Grounded in the true stories of activists and soldiers, parents and children, Shore’s book blends a narrative of suspenseful choices with a historian’s reflections on what revolution is and what it means. She gently sets her portraits of individual revolutionaries against the past as they understand it—and the future as they hope to make it. In so doing, she provides a lesson about human solidarity in a world, our world, where the boundary between reality and fiction is ever more effaced.
320 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2018
About the author
Marci Shore
13 books35 followersMarci Shore is associate professor of history at Yale University and award-winning author of Caviar and Ashes and The Taste of Ashes. She has spent much of her adult life in Central and Eastern Europe.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
February 7, 2021
Bardzo dobry reportaż w formie rozmów i korespondencji, który jest swoistym portretem psychologicznym, mocno zróżnicowanej zbiorowości, gotowej do rewolucji i poświęcenia w imię wartości demokratycznych i samostanowienia.
Warto jednak przeczytać wcześniej coś bardziej faktograficznego, przynajmniej na temat samego Majdanu, ale ważnym wydaje się też kwestia historyczna Ukrainy. Ja miałem to szczęście czytać książkę Marci Shore zaraz po Pograniczu Anny Reid. Mam wrażenie, że dzięki takiemu backgroundowi mogłem zrozumieć o wiele lepiej poszczególnych bohaterów.
Warto jednak przeczytać wcześniej coś bardziej faktograficznego, przynajmniej na temat samego Majdanu, ale ważnym wydaje się też kwestia historyczna Ukrainy. Ja miałem to szczęście czytać książkę Marci Shore zaraz po Pograniczu Anny Reid. Mam wrażenie, że dzięki takiemu backgroundowi mogłem zrozumieć o wiele lepiej poszczególnych bohaterów.
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September 17, 2020I don’t feel comfortable rating this, because I lived through these events and like everyone in this book have a very specific perspective on what happened, not least because I was in my late teens at the time. But in many ways this book explains some of the most difficult to explain concepts and ideas of Ukraine, Ukrainians, Ukrainian culture, society, and consciousness. It definitely focuses on a very specific segment of the population, including a disproportionate number of left-leaning intellectuals. Even so, a half dozen or so perspectives differ from this common vein. To me, these half dozen perspectives are more common than the left wing intellectuals. But that is just my experience.
June 1, 2020
Porządny reportaż traktujący nie tylko o bolesnych doświadczeniach Majdanu i jego donbaskich konsekwencjach, ale wgłębiający się pokrótce w historię tamtejszych ziem i filozofię ludów, które doprowadziły do wydarzeń rewolucji i ciągu dalszych okoliczności.
"Dla Kateriny wszystko w tej scenie było surrealistyczne: prawosławna kobieta na komunistycznym placu udziela chrztu islamskiemu najemnikowi, żeby mógł zabić nieistniejących ukraińskich nazistów." "w ujemnych temperaturach bezdomni lepiej nalewali koktajl Mołotowa do butelek; palce nie grabiały im na mrozie."
Dużo tu mistyki, intymności, politologii, wręcz surrealizmu po- i przednowoczesności. Autorka opisuje niewyobrażalną międzyludzką solidarność i srogie polityczne reperkusje. Poznajemy kolejne doniesienia z Unii Europejskiej, działania Berkutu i Janukowycza, spostrzegamy latające koktajle Mołotowa i wpływowe wpisy na Twitterze, rudymenty Związku Radzieckiego i nacjonalizmu bądź faszyzmu, żądania sprawiedliwości i cywilizacji.
"Dla Kateriny wszystko w tej scenie było surrealistyczne: prawosławna kobieta na komunistycznym placu udziela chrztu islamskiemu najemnikowi, żeby mógł zabić nieistniejących ukraińskich nazistów." "w ujemnych temperaturach bezdomni lepiej nalewali koktajl Mołotowa do butelek; palce nie grabiały im na mrozie."
Dużo tu mistyki, intymności, politologii, wręcz surrealizmu po- i przednowoczesności. Autorka opisuje niewyobrażalną międzyludzką solidarność i srogie polityczne reperkusje. Poznajemy kolejne doniesienia z Unii Europejskiej, działania Berkutu i Janukowycza, spostrzegamy latające koktajle Mołotowa i wpływowe wpisy na Twitterze, rudymenty Związku Radzieckiego i nacjonalizmu bądź faszyzmu, żądania sprawiedliwości i cywilizacji.
March 17, 2023
An insight into the protests and conflict in Ukraine in 2014, a precursor to the current war. The tension felt by people who are loyal to their community but their friends & family may not want an independent Ukraine or to be part of Europe. The trauma inflicted on the Donbas region for example. Also the preparedness for war, which reads sadly now. Interesting collection of personal stories.
May 11, 2023
This belongs on every single person's bookshelf. I don't care who you are, where you come from, what your political stance is, because it is a book that broadens your knowledge, expands your understanding. I want to shout this out from every single rooftop! YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK. This is not about Ukraine and Ukrainians only. It is about the human spirit, and will give you an incredibly intimate look at the Ukrainian situation in particular.
Buy it. Now. Read it. Then savor it, and read it again. Pass it on.
Buy it. Now. Read it. Then savor it, and read it again. Pass it on.
February 13, 2018
A profound, very well researched and written account of a surreal revolution and war that hasn't ended yet based on personal interviews.
August 14, 2019
Bardzo dobra literatura faktu. Gdyby wydarzenia z Majdanu stanowiły całość, dałbym nawet 5 gwiazdek. Rewolucja na Majdanie to porywające zwycięstwo humanizmu, wzór współpracy i sprzeciwu wobec opresyjnej władzy. Studium kooperacji, wzajemnego wsparcia i samoorganizacji. Opis wojny z Rosją, choć bardzo ciekawy, nie miał w sobie już tego metafizycznego czynnika. Sprowadza czytelnika na ziemię, co samo w sobie nie jest złe, ale po prostu ta wojna - choć tragiczna, zbędna i fascynująca jako przykład putinowskiego autorytaryzmu - nie jest doświadczeniem uniwersalnym, nie ujmuje za serce na zwykłym, ludzkim poziomie.
June 16, 2018
More like a 3.5* book
Marci Shore knows her stuff and definitely writes a perfectly good 'intimate' history of the Revolution of Dignity. But as much as I loved The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe, I was disappointed in her Ukrainian text.
At some point, it becomes too intimate, too subjective. For somebody completely unfamiliar with the Ukrainian Maidan events, the book would be a good introduction. A more knowledgeable audience might be struck by its naivete. I would have preferred The Ukrainian Night to be more of an analysis of what has happenned rather than a mere recount of the events of the Maidan, Crimea annexation, and the war with Russia.
The same is applicable to Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom, to which I gave 4* for simply being more grounded in the historical context, albeit of a questionable sort anyway.
Marci Shore knows her stuff and definitely writes a perfectly good 'intimate' history of the Revolution of Dignity. But as much as I loved The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe, I was disappointed in her Ukrainian text.
At some point, it becomes too intimate, too subjective. For somebody completely unfamiliar with the Ukrainian Maidan events, the book would be a good introduction. A more knowledgeable audience might be struck by its naivete. I would have preferred The Ukrainian Night to be more of an analysis of what has happenned rather than a mere recount of the events of the Maidan, Crimea annexation, and the war with Russia.
The same is applicable to Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom, to which I gave 4* for simply being more grounded in the historical context, albeit of a questionable sort anyway.
May 14, 2022
The first half consists of moving oral histories—well curated and integrated—of Ukrainians who participated in the 2014 Revolution of Dignity. Shore is an academic who takes a wider view of revolution—its transient spirit (you had to be there) as well as its lasting psychological impact (having been there, you will never be the same). This comes in the form of allusions and resonant quotations more than lengthly analysis; I found this mostly interesting, though at times it came close to getting on my nerves (trees are more trustworthy than forests). The second half is about Crimea and the ongoing conflict in the Donbas. It's thematically more diffuse but offers much insight into current events. Recommended.
March 12, 2022
An odd one - beautifully written (her Caviar and Ashes is one of the best books on the interwar avantgarde) and very sympathetic in the first half on the sheer complexities of the Maidan. I found much of the second half on eastern Ukraine rather hard to take, though that may be irritation at the views reported more than a flaw in the writing itself.
October 13, 2018
“‘Subjectivity,’” mused a Polish historian friend when we spoke about the Maidan. “I haven’t thought about that word since the days of Solidarity.”
May 3, 2022
Naprawdę bardzo ważna książka. Shore potrafi dotrzeć do sedna sprawy i pozornie nieistotnych aktorów, a także nakreślić szeroki kontekst społeczno-historyczny. I to przy użyciu minimum słów.
December 28, 2022
Definitely not a neutral observer, nor it claims to. It's about the lived experiences of Ukrainians during Maidan: motivations, views, perspectives towards the future. I would have liked to have read more about the far right members of the Maidan, instead we have their views exposed from the narrations of Ukrainian left-wing activists, which have views no more different than the western left-wing. Their particularity is they recognise that during the 2014 Revolution, Svoboda and Right-Sector, although ideological enemies, shared a sense of patriotism and the will to change Ukrainian society into a more European values system. When they clashed against the Berkut Police, the left-wing activists felt safe alongside the right-wing radicals. They even admit some of them being neo-nazis, though a very small minority. Nonetheless their social movements were key to gather support and organize a military defence when Russia invaded Crimea and the Donbas that same year. Although the Right-Sector is known for neo-nazi and wearing the colours of Bandera's Insurgent Army, it's also a fact the movement has Jewish members that protect Jewish sites and communities. During and after Maidan Jewish groups wore the Insurgent Army colours, an obvious irony considering Bandera's supporters killed Poles and Jews alike during WWII. It's somewhat of a postmodern world when you have Russia using a small political entity to fool the west into believing Maidan was a fascist revolution, yet most of the people participating in it were part of the liberal world and desired liberal values. Putin, just like the Soviets, calls fascism to everything that goes against the Russian way of the world, and on that he's no different than the western far left way of viewing the world. In a way, the Ukrainian far-right forwarded Putin's goals, though it did not seem on purpose. In 2022 I'm hoping people learned the lesson of how western media exaggerates their portrayal of political threats to the status quo.
The book is very good to tap into the minds of the activists that participated in the Revolution, but do be careful when taking notes. The experiences of these people, the human factor, is important, but also needs to be understood along with the bigger context, like demographic numbers and Eastern European history.
The book is very good to tap into the minds of the activists that participated in the Revolution, but do be careful when taking notes. The experiences of these people, the human factor, is important, but also needs to be understood along with the bigger context, like demographic numbers and Eastern European history.
May 20, 2023
What little experience I've had with history of ideas has been tracing a concept through time using written documents. This book focuses on a contemporary issue and uses interviews with people who were there (or who could have been but chose not to be). At first I got lost among the many unfamiliar names, but then I read more for the idea and less to trace individual's progression (or lack) of idea. People who reappear frequently have brief descriptive phrases to remind us who they are.
I was struck by occasional comment on languages being used in interviews. There was the comfort in switching languages during a comment, there were instances where the interviewer spoke one language, the interviewee another as they discussed an article in yet a third language. There is a lot we monolingual Americans don't understand. Another important point was to decouple language from nationality: there were people who spoke Russian and considered themselves fully Ukrainian. For me that took away current arguments by Putin claiming that the "special military operaton" was to free oppressed Russian speakers.
The first section focuses on Kyiv. There the decision was to go to the protest or not to go because of danger more than being about a clash of ideas. The second part focuses on the Donbas where idea difference was more at play. While there are interviews of various positions, there are more pro protest and revolution. One interviewee said that about a third of the people were for, a third against and a third indifferent. A couple pro revolution interviewees said that if the Russians were to cross the border back to Russia, the Separatist struggle would soon be over.
The book is an intriguing look into thoughts people consider when making decisions in a time of unsettling one government for another.
I was struck by occasional comment on languages being used in interviews. There was the comfort in switching languages during a comment, there were instances where the interviewer spoke one language, the interviewee another as they discussed an article in yet a third language. There is a lot we monolingual Americans don't understand. Another important point was to decouple language from nationality: there were people who spoke Russian and considered themselves fully Ukrainian. For me that took away current arguments by Putin claiming that the "special military operaton" was to free oppressed Russian speakers.
The first section focuses on Kyiv. There the decision was to go to the protest or not to go because of danger more than being about a clash of ideas. The second part focuses on the Donbas where idea difference was more at play. While there are interviews of various positions, there are more pro protest and revolution. One interviewee said that about a third of the people were for, a third against and a third indifferent. A couple pro revolution interviewees said that if the Russians were to cross the border back to Russia, the Separatist struggle would soon be over.
The book is an intriguing look into thoughts people consider when making decisions in a time of unsettling one government for another.
March 28, 2022
Zapowiadało się naprawdę dobrze. Liczyłam na sporą dawkę wiedzy, złamane serce i jakąś taką satysfakcję z przeczytania tego reportażu. Szkoda tylko, że im więcej zaczynało się dziać w książce, tym większy chaos zaczął się wkradać do tekstu. Ciężko było się rozeznać nie tylko w postaciach, ale też w chronologii wydarzeń. Zupełnie jakby autorka chciała opisać wszystko na raz.
Dodatkowo Shore miała momentami wręcz upierdliwie natrętny dla mnie nawyk zaznaczania swojej obecności w tej historii. Nie przeszkadza mi to, jeśli autor faktycznie jest potrzebny do opowiedzenia danej historii, tutaj niestety nie była.
Dodatkowo Shore miała momentami wręcz upierdliwie natrętny dla mnie nawyk zaznaczania swojej obecności w tej historii. Nie przeszkadza mi to, jeśli autor faktycznie jest potrzebny do opowiedzenia danej historii, tutaj niestety nie była.
May 10, 2022
Helpful and evocative overview of recent Ukrainian history
January 15, 2023
(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)
Сегодня ночью я смотрю в окно
и думаю о том, куда зашли мы?
И от чего мы больше далеки:
от православья или эллинизма?
К чему близки мы? Что там, впереди?
Не ждет ли нас теперь другая эра?
И если так, то в чем наш общий долг?
И что должны мы принести ей в жертву?
Книга напоминает журналистские заметки, созданные на осн��ве интервью с различными участниками, нежели анализ случившегося события. Однако возможно в этом только плюс, ибо текст получился простым и понятным, как любой текст подобного жанра.
Автор знакомит читателя с несколькими участниками событий на Майдане в 2013–14 годах. Описания переживаний этих людей, что они испытывали, действительно поражают. В какой-то момент я понял, что лично я бы не осмелился участвовать в них, т.е. когда Беркут начал стрелять в людей. Именно в такие моменты понимаешь, насколько несправедливо, глупо и опасно государство (любое государство). Спрашивается, зачем Янукович приказал очистить площадь? Зачем приказал избивать людей? Это смесь глупости и вседозволенности советского образца, очень сильно поражает (и злит). Но также поражает смелость людей. Конечно, когда видишь такой акт несправедливость – кому они мешали там, на площади?! – хочется такой несправедливости сопротивляться всеми силами. Но лишь до того момента пока в тебя не стреляют из настоящего оружия. Зная, что у людей, противостоящих Беркуту, не было фактически ничего, особенно сильно сопереживаешь за тех смельчаков, а возможно и героев, кто не побоялся и бросил вызов государственной машине. И не важно, насколько идеализированными и несбыточными (или сбыточными) были их мечты и устремления. Книга очень хорошо показывает, что вина всегда на стороне сильного, особенно когда этим сильным является государство. Примечательно, что в этой книге государство представилось мне как некая холодная и серая бетонная стена, которая прёт на людей не замечая ничего – приказ же!
Я не могу сказать, что автор обрисовала всё полноту взглядов участников революции, а скорее только какую-то её небольшую часть, которая не может характеризовать собой всю массу участников революции 2013–14. Возможно, именно поэтому книга получалась максимально эмоциональной и минимально – информативной. В книге очень и очень много размышлений отдельных людей непосредственно о себе и лишь во вторую очередь – о государстве (или системе). Плохо это или хорошо, трудно сказать, ибо формат книги не подразумевает комплексный подход. Мы видим лишь эпизоды, пусть и яркие, но не видим итоговые результаты. Мы не видим, насколько интервью соотносятся с мнениями остальных людей. И насколько остальные люди согласны с тем, что революция победила. А самое главное, была ли революция и если была, то против кого? Я этого так и не понял, исходя из того что прочёл в книге.
Описываемые события, а точнее размышления людей, напомнили мне две похожие революции в других братских (т.е. славянских) странах – России и Белоруссии. Я не упоминаю тут (революцию) Грузию, Армению и Киргизию, т.к. не следил за ними настолько внимательно как за славянскими народами, ибо являюсь представителем именно славянского народа. Так вот, революция в Украине напомнила мне революцию в Белоруссии в 2020 (пусть и неудавшуюся) и в России в 1991 году. Если бы я не знал, что слова принадлежат гражданам Украины, я бы подумал, что это говорят русские в 1991 или белорусы в 2020, ибо те же надежды и те же мечты на лучшую жизнь. Видно, что люди искренне верили в идею, что нужно всеми силами оказаться в Европе, чтобы наконец-то зажить как люди. Россия 1991 года переживала нечто подобное, когда люди думали, что если они откроются миру и принят западные ценности, капитализм и пр., то заживут как в Европе. Примечательно, что в книге нет ни слова о важности демократии как политической системе, о важности законов, которые применимы (исполнимы) ко всем - от самых бедных до самых богатых - включая политиков всех мастей, об институте судейства, которое не даёт одной ветви власти подмять под себя другую и построить вследствие этого авторитарный режим и важности реформ (реформировании страны на западный образец). Вот этого в книге нет. Плохо ли это? Скажем там: мне было некомфортно читать все те патриотические лозунги типа «мы все украинцы», «независимая Украина», «выбор будущего для страны», «европейский путь развития», «чувство единства» и прочее и не потому, что я не являюсь гражданином Украины, а потому, что это патриотическая шелуха призывающая объединиться в единую массу и пойти строем. А я не люблю ходить строем. Я родился в стране, где от всех граждан требовали ходить строем («И я держу равнение, даже целуясь»). Это трудно понять, ибо люди любят болеть за свои сборные, радоваться за успехи своей страны и ходить с флагами. Правда, есть небольшая группа людей, которая не любит всего этого, которая не болеет за свои сборные и не кутается в родной флаг. И я один из них. Революция прошла. Затихли эмоции (на какое-то время, точнее на 8 лет «тёплой войны»). А что осталось? Какие идеи, которые можно положить в практическую область и заставить работать, появились в результате революции 2013–14? Ответ книга не даёт. Поэтому невольно возникает чувство, что люди делали не революцию, а сопротивлялись несправедливости, отстаивали право не быть избитыми. Я ничуть не хочу принизить это желание, но лишь подчеркну, что это не выглядит революцией. Точнее, это не политическая революция, которая делает страну принципиально другой. Вот я читал ужасные случаи зверств в отношении участников со стороны Беркута и титушек. Все ли они были найдены и наказаны, как это произошло бы в любой западной стране? Да нет, ибо Беркут постоял на коленях под телекамерами, после чего их простили. Возможно, кого-то и осудили, но я ничего не слышал о больших процессах, наподобие того, который случился недавно в США после штурма Капитолия. А ведь для украинцев это было бы важным уроком, что за нарушение закона (неспровоцированное насилие в отношении людей) следует гарантированное наказание. И это я не говорю о попытках проведение антикоррупционных реформ по образцу Грузии, которые провёл Михаил Саакашвили. Так что на самом деле произошло? Политическая революция? Бунт? Гражданское сопротивление насилию? История покажет.
Самой слабой частью является вторая половина книги, в которой речь идёт о событиях, последовавших за аннексией Крыма и началом войны на Донбассе. Мне кажется, автору стоило больше внимания уделить участникам революции, ибо Крым и Донбасс являются слишком крупными темами, чтобы их можно было уместить в одной книге, наравне с другой такой же огромной – революцией на Майдане. Однако примечательно, что автор показывает, что на востоке Украины люди не были настолько оптимистично настроены в отношении «Европейского выбора развития». Примечательным тут является также и мысли людей, которые можно обобщить фразой «нужно снести все памятники Ленину и тогда всё наладится». Это перифраз тех же идей что бушевали в головах россиян в 1991 году. Такое чувство, что все проблемы Украины (а также России или любой другой постсоветской страны) упираются в присутствующие памятники Ленину или какому-либо ещё историческому лицу. Ещё Эдвард Радзинский писал, что революция всегда начинается со сносов памятников. И боюсь, она ими и ограничивается. Но возможно я ошибаюсь, и в Украине были люди, которые задавались не тем исконно русским вопросом «Кто виноват?», а вопросом «Что делать?». Увы, но книга рисует украинцев как людей интересующихся вопросом «Кто виноват?» и именно поэтому тут присутствуют в подавляющем числе патриотические лозунги о единстве украинского народа и его сплочение вокруг государства. Ох, как же это по-русски: если плакать, то всем вместе; если радоваться, то всей страной. Я же по натуре индивидуалист, а индивидуалисты хотят услышать что-то конкретное и прак��ичное, а не просто лозунги, которыми лично я сыт по горло (даже фраза «мы за европейский путь развития» ничего не говорит, ибо не даёт конкретный набор действий, по которым можно судить, следует власть намеченному или только пускает пыль в глаза и поэтому является скорее заменой старого лозунга типа «Советские люди твёрдо знают: там, где партия, там успех, там победа!» или «Учение Маркса всесильно, потому что оно верно»).
Я не хочу, чтобы моя рецензия воспринималась как отрицание ценности революции 2013–14 в Украине. В своей рецензии я передал чувство разочарования прошедшими на просторах СНГ революций, которые лишь сменили имена людей, стоявших во главе стран, но не сменили самое главное – систему. Поэтому целью моей рецензии не являлось принизить поступки украинского народа, а скорее передать ощущение, что народы бывшего СССР бродят по кругу. Мне же хотелось бы, что бы хотя бы один народ вырвался из-за этого заколдованного круга.
The book resembles journalistic notes based on interviews with various participants rather than an analysis of what happened. However, perhaps this is a plus because the text is simple and straightforward, like any text of this genre.
The author introduces the reader to several participants in the events on the Maidan in 2013-14. The descriptions of these people's experiences, what they experienced, are truly astounding. At one point, I realized that I personally would not have dared to participate in them, i.e., when Berkut started shooting at people. It's in such moments you realize how unfair, stupid, and dangerous the state (any state) is. The question is, why did Yanukovych order to clear the square? Why did he order the beating of people? This mixture of stupidity and Soviet-style permissiveness is very striking (and angry). But also striking is the courage of the people. Of course, when you see such an act of injustice - who were they bothering there, on the square? - you want to resist this injustice with all your strength. But only as long as you are not shot with a real gun. Knowing that the people confronting the Berkut had virtually nothing, you empathize especially strongly with those daredevils and perhaps even heroes who were not afraid and challenged the state machine. And no matter how idealized and unfulfilled (or fulfilled) their dreams and aspirations were. The book shows very well that guilt is always on the side of the strong, especially when that strong is the state. It is noteworthy that in this book, I saw the state as a cold and gray concrete wall, which is coming at people without noticing - an order!
I cannot say that the author depicted the entirety of the views of the participants in the revolution, but rather only a small part of it, which cannot characterize the entire mass of participants in the revolution of 2013-14. Perhaps that's why the book was the most emotional and the least - informative. The book is very, very much a reflection of individuals on themselves and only secondarily on the state (or system). It is difficult to say whether this is good or bad because the format of the book does not imply a comprehensive approach. We see only episodes, albeit vivid, but we do not see the final results. We don't see how the interviews correlate with the opinions of the rest of the people. And how much the rest of the people agree that the revolution has won. And most importantly, was there a revolution, and if so, against whom? I never understood that, based on what I read in the book.
The events described (or rather people's thoughts) reminded me of two similar revolutions in other brotherly (i.e., Slavic) countries - Russia and Belarus. I do not mention here (the revolution) Georgia, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan, as I have not followed them as closely as the Slavic peoples, because I am a representative of the Slavic people. So, the revolution in Ukraine reminded me of the revolution in Belarus in 2020 (albeit unsuccessful) and Russia in 1991. If I didn't know the words belonged to Ukrainian citizens, I would have thought they were said by Russians in 1991 or Belarusians in 2020 because it's the same hopes and the same dreams for a better life. One could see that people sincerely believed in the idea that it was necessary by all means to be in Europe to finally live like human beings. Russia experienced something similar in 1991 when people thought that if they opened up to the world and accepted Western values, capitalism, etc., they would live like in Europe. It is noteworthy that there is not a single word in the book about the importance of democracy as a political system, about the importance of laws that apply (enforceable) to everyone - from the poorest to the wealthiest - including politicians of all stripes, about the institution of justice, which prevents one branch of government from subjugating another and consequently building an authoritarian regime and the importance of reforms (reforming the country to the Western model). That's what's not in the book. Is it bad? Let's say there: I was uncomfortable reading all those patriotic slogans like "we are all Ukrainians," "independent Ukraine," "choosing a future for the country," "European way of development," "sense of unity" and so on and not because I am not a Ukrainian citizen, but because it is patriotic mumbo jumbo calling to unite into a single mass and march in formation. And I don't like to march in formation. I was born in a country where all citizens were required to walk in formation. It is hard to understand because people love to cheer for their national teams, rejoice in their country's successes, and walk around with flags. True, there is a small group of people who don't like all that, who don't cheer for their national teams and wrap themselves in their native flag. And I am one of them. The revolution has passed. Emotions have subsided (for a while, or rather for 8 years of "warm warfare"). What's left? What ideas that can be put into practice and made to work came out of the 2013-14 revolution? The book does not provide an answer. So one cannot help feeling that people were not making a revolution but were resisting injustice, defending the right not to be beaten. I do not, in the least, want to belittle this desire, but only to emphasize that it does not look like a revolution. More precisely, it is not a political revolution that makes the country fundamentally different. Here I have read horrific cases of atrocities against participants by the Berkut and titushkas. Were they all found and punished as they would be in any Western country? No, because Berkut went on his knees under the TV cameras, after which they were pardoned. Maybe some of them were convicted, but I haven't heard anything about big trials like the one that happened recently in the USA after the storming of the Capitol (On January 6, 2021). It would have been an important lesson for Ukrainians that there is guaranteed punishment for breaking the law (unprovoked violence against people). And I'm not talking about the attempts at anti-corruption reforms modeled on Georgia's Mikhail Saakashvili. So what actually happened? A political revolution? A rebellion? Civil resistance to violence? History will tell.
The weakest part is the second half of the book which deals with the events that followed the annexation of Crimea and the beginning of the war in Donbas. I think the author should have paid more attention to the participants of the revolution because Crimea and Donbas are too big topics to fit into one book, on par with another equally huge one, the Maidan revolution. It is noteworthy, however, that the author shows that people in eastern Ukraine were not so optimistic about the "European choice of development. Also noteworthy are the people's thoughts, which can be summarized by the phrase "we need to tear down all the Lenin monuments and then everything will get better." This is a paraphrase of the same ideas that raged in the minds of Russians in 1991. It feels as if all the problems of Ukraine (as well as Russia or any other post-Soviet country) rest on the presence of monuments to Lenin or any other historical person. Edvard Radzinsky wrote that revolution always begins with the demolition of monuments. And I'm afraid it ends with them. But perhaps I'm wrong, and there were people in Ukraine who were asking not that native Russian question "Who is to blame?" but the question "What is to be done? Alas, the book paints Ukrainians as people interested in the question "Who is to blame?" that is why there are overwhelmingly patriotic slogans about the unity of the Ukrainian people and their unity around the state. Oh, how Russian it is: if to cry, then all together; if to rejoice, then the whole country. I am an individualist by nature, and individualists want to hear something concrete and practical, not just slogans with which I am personally fed up (even the phrase "we are for the European way of development" says nothing because it does not give a concrete set of actions by which one can judge whether the government is following what it has planned or just throwing dust in its eyes and is therefore rather a replacement for old slogans like "Soviet people firmly know: where the party, there is a success, there is victory!" or "Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true").
I do not want my review to be perceived as a denial of the value of the 2013-14 revolution in Ukraine. In my review, I conveyed a sense of disappointment with the revolutions that took place in the CIS, which only changed the names of the people who were in charge of the countries but did not change the most important thing - the system. Therefore, the purpose of my review was not to belittle the deeds of the Ukrainian people but rather to convey the feeling that the people of the former Soviet Union are wandering in circles. I would like at least one nation to break out of this vicious circle.
Сегодня ночью я смотрю в окно
и думаю о том, куда зашли мы?
И от чего мы больше далеки:
от православья или эллинизма?
К чему близки мы? Что там, впереди?
Не ждет ли нас теперь другая эра?
И если так, то в чем наш общий долг?
И что должны мы принести ей в жертву?
Книга напоминает журналистские заметки, созданные на осн��ве интервью с различными участниками, нежели анализ случившегося события. Однако возможно в этом только плюс, ибо текст получился простым и понятным, как любой текст подобного жанра.
Автор знакомит читателя с несколькими участниками событий на Майдане в 2013–14 годах. Описания переживаний этих людей, что они испытывали, действительно поражают. В какой-то момент я понял, что лично я бы не осмелился участвовать в них, т.е. когда Беркут начал стрелять в людей. Именно в такие моменты понимаешь, насколько несправедливо, глупо и опасно государство (любое государство). Спрашивается, зачем Янукович приказал очистить площадь? Зачем приказал избивать людей? Это смесь глупости и вседозволенности советского образца, очень сильно поражает (и злит). Но также поражает смелость людей. Конечно, когда видишь такой акт несправедливость – кому они мешали там, на площади?! – хочется такой несправедливости сопротивляться всеми силами. Но лишь до того момента пока в тебя не стреляют из настоящего оружия. Зная, что у людей, противостоящих Беркуту, не было фактически ничего, особенно сильно сопереживаешь за тех смельчаков, а возможно и героев, кто не побоялся и бросил вызов государственной машине. И не важно, насколько идеализированными и несбыточными (или сбыточными) были их мечты и устремления. Книга очень хорошо показывает, что вина всегда на стороне сильного, особенно когда этим сильным является государство. Примечательно, что в этой книге государство представилось мне как некая холодная и серая бетонная стена, которая прёт на людей не замечая ничего – приказ же!
Я не могу сказать, что автор обрисовала всё полноту взглядов участников революции, а скорее только какую-то её небольшую часть, которая не может характеризовать собой всю массу участников революции 2013–14. Возможно, именно поэтому книга получалась максимально эмоциональной и минимально – информативной. В книге очень и очень много размышлений отдельных людей непосредственно о себе и лишь во вторую очередь – о государстве (или системе). Плохо это или хорошо, трудно сказать, ибо формат книги не подразумевает комплексный подход. Мы видим лишь эпизоды, пусть и яркие, но не видим итоговые результаты. Мы не видим, насколько интервью соотносятся с мнениями остальных людей. И насколько остальные люди согласны с тем, что революция победила. А самое главное, была ли революция и если была, то против кого? Я этого так и не понял, исходя из того что прочёл в книге.
Описываемые события, а точнее размышления людей, напомнили мне две похожие революции в других братских (т.е. славянских) странах – России и Белоруссии. Я не упоминаю тут (революцию) Грузию, Армению и Киргизию, т.к. не следил за ними настолько внимательно как за славянскими народами, ибо являюсь представителем именно славянского народа. Так вот, революция в Украине напомнила мне революцию в Белоруссии в 2020 (пусть и неудавшуюся) и в России в 1991 году. Если бы я не знал, что слова принадлежат гражданам Украины, я бы подумал, что это говорят русские в 1991 или белорусы в 2020, ибо те же надежды и те же мечты на лучшую жизнь. Видно, что люди искренне верили в идею, что нужно всеми силами оказаться в Европе, чтобы наконец-то зажить как люди. Россия 1991 года переживала нечто подобное, когда люди думали, что если они откроются миру и принят западные ценности, капитализм и пр., то заживут как в Европе. Примечательно, что в книге нет ни слова о важности демократии как политической системе, о важности законов, которые применимы (исполнимы) ко всем - от самых бедных до самых богатых - включая политиков всех мастей, об институте судейства, которое не даёт одной ветви власти подмять под себя другую и построить вследствие этого авторитарный режим и важности реформ (реформировании страны на западный образец). Вот этого в книге нет. Плохо ли это? Скажем там: мне было некомфортно читать все те патриотические лозунги типа «мы все украинцы», «независимая Украина», «выбор будущего для страны», «европейский путь развития», «чувство единства» и прочее и не потому, что я не являюсь гражданином Украины, а потому, что это патриотическая шелуха призывающая объединиться в единую массу и пойти строем. А я не люблю ходить строем. Я родился в стране, где от всех граждан требовали ходить строем («И я держу равнение, даже целуясь»). Это трудно понять, ибо люди любят болеть за свои сборные, радоваться за успехи своей страны и ходить с флагами. Правда, есть небольшая группа людей, которая не любит всего этого, которая не болеет за свои сборные и не кутается в родной флаг. И я один из них. Революция прошла. Затихли эмоции (на какое-то время, точнее на 8 лет «тёплой войны»). А что осталось? Какие идеи, которые можно положить в практическую область и заставить работать, появились в результате революции 2013–14? Ответ книга не даёт. Поэтому невольно возникает чувство, что люди делали не революцию, а сопротивлялись несправедливости, отстаивали право не быть избитыми. Я ничуть не хочу принизить это желание, но лишь подчеркну, что это не выглядит революцией. Точнее, это не политическая революция, которая делает страну принципиально другой. Вот я читал ужасные случаи зверств в отношении участников со стороны Беркута и титушек. Все ли они были найдены и наказаны, как это произошло бы в любой западной стране? Да нет, ибо Беркут постоял на коленях под телекамерами, после чего их простили. Возможно, кого-то и осудили, но я ничего не слышал о больших процессах, наподобие того, который случился недавно в США после штурма Капитолия. А ведь для украинцев это было бы важным уроком, что за нарушение закона (неспровоцированное насилие в отношении людей) следует гарантированное наказание. И это я не говорю о попытках проведение антикоррупционных реформ по образцу Грузии, которые провёл Михаил Саакашвили. Так что на самом деле произошло? Политическая революция? Бунт? Гражданское сопротивление насилию? История покажет.
Самой слабой частью является вторая половина книги, в которой речь идёт о событиях, последовавших за аннексией Крыма и началом войны на Донбассе. Мне кажется, автору стоило больше внимания уделить участникам революции, ибо Крым и Донбасс являются слишком крупными темами, чтобы их можно было уместить в одной книге, наравне с другой такой же огромной – революцией на Майдане. Однако примечательно, что автор показывает, что на востоке Украины люди не были настолько оптимистично настроены в отношении «Европейского выбора развития». Примечательным тут является также и мысли людей, которые можно обобщить фразой «нужно снести все памятники Ленину и тогда всё наладится». Это перифраз тех же идей что бушевали в головах россиян в 1991 году. Такое чувство, что все проблемы Украины (а также России или любой другой постсоветской страны) упираются в присутствующие памятники Ленину или какому-либо ещё историческому лицу. Ещё Эдвард Радзинский писал, что революция всегда начинается со сносов памятников. И боюсь, она ими и ограничивается. Но возможно я ошибаюсь, и в Украине были люди, которые задавались не тем исконно русским вопросом «Кто виноват?», а вопросом «Что делать?». Увы, но книга рисует украинцев как людей интересующихся вопросом «Кто виноват?» и именно поэтому тут присутствуют в подавляющем числе патриотические лозунги о единстве украинского народа и его сплочение вокруг государства. Ох, как же это по-русски: если плакать, то всем вместе; если радоваться, то всей страной. Я же по натуре индивидуалист, а индивидуалисты хотят услышать что-то конкретное и прак��ичное, а не просто лозунги, которыми лично я сыт по горло (даже фраза «мы за европейский путь развития» ничего не говорит, ибо не даёт конкретный набор действий, по которым можно судить, следует власть намеченному или только пускает пыль в глаза и поэтому является скорее заменой старого лозунга типа «Советские люди твёрдо знают: там, где партия, там успех, там победа!» или «Учение Маркса всесильно, потому что оно верно»).
Я не хочу, чтобы моя рецензия воспринималась как отрицание ценности революции 2013–14 в Украине. В своей рецензии я передал чувство разочарования прошедшими на просторах СНГ революций, которые лишь сменили имена людей, стоявших во главе стран, но не сменили самое главное – систему. Поэтому целью моей рецензии не являлось принизить поступки украинского народа, а скорее передать ощущение, что народы бывшего СССР бродят по кругу. Мне же хотелось бы, что бы хотя бы один народ вырвался из-за этого заколдованного круга.
The book resembles journalistic notes based on interviews with various participants rather than an analysis of what happened. However, perhaps this is a plus because the text is simple and straightforward, like any text of this genre.
The author introduces the reader to several participants in the events on the Maidan in 2013-14. The descriptions of these people's experiences, what they experienced, are truly astounding. At one point, I realized that I personally would not have dared to participate in them, i.e., when Berkut started shooting at people. It's in such moments you realize how unfair, stupid, and dangerous the state (any state) is. The question is, why did Yanukovych order to clear the square? Why did he order the beating of people? This mixture of stupidity and Soviet-style permissiveness is very striking (and angry). But also striking is the courage of the people. Of course, when you see such an act of injustice - who were they bothering there, on the square? - you want to resist this injustice with all your strength. But only as long as you are not shot with a real gun. Knowing that the people confronting the Berkut had virtually nothing, you empathize especially strongly with those daredevils and perhaps even heroes who were not afraid and challenged the state machine. And no matter how idealized and unfulfilled (or fulfilled) their dreams and aspirations were. The book shows very well that guilt is always on the side of the strong, especially when that strong is the state. It is noteworthy that in this book, I saw the state as a cold and gray concrete wall, which is coming at people without noticing - an order!
I cannot say that the author depicted the entirety of the views of the participants in the revolution, but rather only a small part of it, which cannot characterize the entire mass of participants in the revolution of 2013-14. Perhaps that's why the book was the most emotional and the least - informative. The book is very, very much a reflection of individuals on themselves and only secondarily on the state (or system). It is difficult to say whether this is good or bad because the format of the book does not imply a comprehensive approach. We see only episodes, albeit vivid, but we do not see the final results. We don't see how the interviews correlate with the opinions of the rest of the people. And how much the rest of the people agree that the revolution has won. And most importantly, was there a revolution, and if so, against whom? I never understood that, based on what I read in the book.
The events described (or rather people's thoughts) reminded me of two similar revolutions in other brotherly (i.e., Slavic) countries - Russia and Belarus. I do not mention here (the revolution) Georgia, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan, as I have not followed them as closely as the Slavic peoples, because I am a representative of the Slavic people. So, the revolution in Ukraine reminded me of the revolution in Belarus in 2020 (albeit unsuccessful) and Russia in 1991. If I didn't know the words belonged to Ukrainian citizens, I would have thought they were said by Russians in 1991 or Belarusians in 2020 because it's the same hopes and the same dreams for a better life. One could see that people sincerely believed in the idea that it was necessary by all means to be in Europe to finally live like human beings. Russia experienced something similar in 1991 when people thought that if they opened up to the world and accepted Western values, capitalism, etc., they would live like in Europe. It is noteworthy that there is not a single word in the book about the importance of democracy as a political system, about the importance of laws that apply (enforceable) to everyone - from the poorest to the wealthiest - including politicians of all stripes, about the institution of justice, which prevents one branch of government from subjugating another and consequently building an authoritarian regime and the importance of reforms (reforming the country to the Western model). That's what's not in the book. Is it bad? Let's say there: I was uncomfortable reading all those patriotic slogans like "we are all Ukrainians," "independent Ukraine," "choosing a future for the country," "European way of development," "sense of unity" and so on and not because I am not a Ukrainian citizen, but because it is patriotic mumbo jumbo calling to unite into a single mass and march in formation. And I don't like to march in formation. I was born in a country where all citizens were required to walk in formation. It is hard to understand because people love to cheer for their national teams, rejoice in their country's successes, and walk around with flags. True, there is a small group of people who don't like all that, who don't cheer for their national teams and wrap themselves in their native flag. And I am one of them. The revolution has passed. Emotions have subsided (for a while, or rather for 8 years of "warm warfare"). What's left? What ideas that can be put into practice and made to work came out of the 2013-14 revolution? The book does not provide an answer. So one cannot help feeling that people were not making a revolution but were resisting injustice, defending the right not to be beaten. I do not, in the least, want to belittle this desire, but only to emphasize that it does not look like a revolution. More precisely, it is not a political revolution that makes the country fundamentally different. Here I have read horrific cases of atrocities against participants by the Berkut and titushkas. Were they all found and punished as they would be in any Western country? No, because Berkut went on his knees under the TV cameras, after which they were pardoned. Maybe some of them were convicted, but I haven't heard anything about big trials like the one that happened recently in the USA after the storming of the Capitol (On January 6, 2021). It would have been an important lesson for Ukrainians that there is guaranteed punishment for breaking the law (unprovoked violence against people). And I'm not talking about the attempts at anti-corruption reforms modeled on Georgia's Mikhail Saakashvili. So what actually happened? A political revolution? A rebellion? Civil resistance to violence? History will tell.
The weakest part is the second half of the book which deals with the events that followed the annexation of Crimea and the beginning of the war in Donbas. I think the author should have paid more attention to the participants of the revolution because Crimea and Donbas are too big topics to fit into one book, on par with another equally huge one, the Maidan revolution. It is noteworthy, however, that the author shows that people in eastern Ukraine were not so optimistic about the "European choice of development. Also noteworthy are the people's thoughts, which can be summarized by the phrase "we need to tear down all the Lenin monuments and then everything will get better." This is a paraphrase of the same ideas that raged in the minds of Russians in 1991. It feels as if all the problems of Ukraine (as well as Russia or any other post-Soviet country) rest on the presence of monuments to Lenin or any other historical person. Edvard Radzinsky wrote that revolution always begins with the demolition of monuments. And I'm afraid it ends with them. But perhaps I'm wrong, and there were people in Ukraine who were asking not that native Russian question "Who is to blame?" but the question "What is to be done? Alas, the book paints Ukrainians as people interested in the question "Who is to blame?" that is why there are overwhelmingly patriotic slogans about the unity of the Ukrainian people and their unity around the state. Oh, how Russian it is: if to cry, then all together; if to rejoice, then the whole country. I am an individualist by nature, and individualists want to hear something concrete and practical, not just slogans with which I am personally fed up (even the phrase "we are for the European way of development" says nothing because it does not give a concrete set of actions by which one can judge whether the government is following what it has planned or just throwing dust in its eyes and is therefore rather a replacement for old slogans like "Soviet people firmly know: where the party, there is a success, there is victory!" or "Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true").
I do not want my review to be perceived as a denial of the value of the 2013-14 revolution in Ukraine. In my review, I conveyed a sense of disappointment with the revolutions that took place in the CIS, which only changed the names of the people who were in charge of the countries but did not change the most important thing - the system. Therefore, the purpose of my review was not to belittle the deeds of the Ukrainian people but rather to convey the feeling that the people of the former Soviet Union are wandering in circles. I would like at least one nation to break out of this vicious circle.
April 1, 2022
Solidny reportaż, który pomaga w poznaniu i zrozumieniu ostatnich ~10 lat historii Ukrainy. Skupia się w dużej mierze na wydarzeniach z Majdanu oddając głos bohaterom tych wydarzeń. Autorka przywołuje wspomnienia różnych ludzi uczestniczących w Majdanie, tworzy niejako portret psychologiczny społeczeństwa ukraińskiego z tamtego okresu. Czytelnik poznaje genezę tych zdarzeń, przebieg i konsekwencje.
W drugiej części książki poruszony zostaje temat Donbasu, natomiast ta część (z racji ostatnich wydarzeń) jest już trochę zdezaktualizowana, niemniej pozwoliła mi lepiej zrozumieć nastroje i historię konfliktu w tamtym rejonie. Odnoszę wrażenie, że pierwsza część książki była napisana z większym zaangażowaniem, przez co druga część wypada nieco gorzej.
W drugiej części książki poruszony zostaje temat Donbasu, natomiast ta część (z racji ostatnich wydarzeń) jest już trochę zdezaktualizowana, niemniej pozwoliła mi lepiej zrozumieć nastroje i historię konfliktu w tamtym rejonie. Odnoszę wrażenie, że pierwsza część książki była napisana z większym zaangażowaniem, przez co druga część wypada nieco gorzej.
Read
January 24, 2023I think this is a good supplement to other histories. I approached this book not assuming any narratives were representative, but moreso appreciating the insight into at least some people's thoughts and experiences. (intimate history, indeed)
There are many sections that I wanted to remember, poignant lines that speak to the specific experience of Maidan / the start of the war in 2014, that speak to the Ukrainian context generally, or that speak to the human experience generally. Here are some.
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"Jurko's mother, born in 1940 during the Red Army's occupation of Easter Galicia, had always been a Ukrainian patriot. As a girl growing up during late Stalinism she saw the disaster that Soviet rule was for her family: their property was expropriated; some relatives were shot; others lost their minds in prison. Even so, she wanted very much to sing the beautiful songs and believe that the Soviet Union wished for peace throughout the world. To Jurko she was deeply good, and deeply naive. He described her as 'an orchid, an orchid of catastrophe.'"
"Jurko had hoped that Ukraine would join Europe. Yet there were, as it turned out, more voiced on behalf of Soviet continuity. Jurko's was not an easy position: to reject continuity with communism; to reject the cult of Stepan Bandera and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. It was not easy to live ensconced in nostalgia for a world that had ceased to exist long before his own birth; to cling to a liberal nationalism whose moment had passed before it was ever realized; to insist on a gentle, anti-imperial patriotism, a vision of the Ukrainian nation realizing itself harmoniously with a cosmopolitan Ukrainian state."
The disillusionment with Yushchenko as a "cure for paternalism" -- "At the time we thought there was a bad father, and we had to replace the bad father with a good father. And now we no longer believe in a father at all."
The historic facebook post that brought largely student protestors to Maidan to protest Yanukovych's turn from the EU, ending with "likes don't count."
"On 30 November the novelist Yuri Andrukhovych was at the Lviv airport waiting for his flight to Vienna when he learned that the students in Kiev had been beaten. He did not get on the plane. Instead he left the airport and went to Kiev. Yanukovych had broken an unspoken social contract: in the two decades since independence, the government had never used this kind of violence against its own citizens."
"On 30 November Yanukovych was counting on parents to drag their children off the streets. He miscalculated."
On parents and others joining the student protestors -- "[parents] did not drag their sons and daughters off the streets. Instead they joined them there. [..] middle aged men with combat experience -- came to the Maidan to defend the students."
"'We will protect our children,' became the slogan -- even of those who did not have children themselves. 'It cannot be permitted,' Markiyan remembered two elderly women, one speaking Ukrainian and one speaking Russian, saying in Kiev. 'We cannot let them beat our children.'"
[here I think of how people joined the Maidan -- we won't let you beat our children. I think of the people on the streets in Iran now, of the video of two small children walking down the street yelling "we don't want a child-killing regime!"]
One slogan from Maidan that day -- "Let's bury the remains of Chernobyl in the Kremlin wall!"
The entire concept of parallel polis -- when protesting a regime, the idea that the protest movement itself must display the traits one wishes to see in the end result. The kitchens, the medics, any bit of infrastructure used to help the protest. And how this created a sense of safety there -- "'You're afraid before you go there. When you're there you're not afraid anymore.'" "Watching television [news reports of Maidan] made them too nervous. They felt safe only on the Maidan"
On everyone feeling brave and participating -- "Lena, 'the gentlest creature in the world,' as Ola described her, was a slightly plump woman less than five feet tall who walked with a limp. Ola had to pull her away from the riot policemen, because Lena felt compelled to tell each one of them how she felt about what he was doing." "[a young rabbi] broke the Sabbath for the first time in his adult life. He felt no ambivalence about this: he was protecting civilian lives."
Language on the Maidan -- "The division between Right and Left on the Maidan [...] had little if anything to do with language. Yanukovych repeatedly warned Ukrainians that the Maidan was full of Banderovtsy who would persecute Russian speakers and force them to speak only Ukrainian. Yet Russian, as much as Ukrainian, was the language of the Maidan. It was on the Maidan, the philosopher Taras Dobko told me, that Russian became for him a language of freedom." [resonates deeply for me -- I dream of a Russian language freed from the confines of empire. I want to practice a Russian language that does not signify allegiance to a state. A language that Putin cannot use to claim you, to kill in your name, to kill you in your name].
"'The value of personal freedom is not a fundamental law of physics' Slava told students in London, 'it's a choice.'"
after an activist in Kharkiv was stabbed, young historian Volodymyr Sklokin says "I think it was in those hours that I experienced what at one time or another every participant in a revolution experiences. My reason said that resistance made no sense, that it would make more sense to await a better moment to change the regime. I asked myself what we could possibly do against a regime that controlled the militia and was willing to behave criminally. [...] My reason said: better not to do anything [...] And then I asked myself how I would look in the eyes of [fellow activist] if I did not come to the meeting that day. How would we look to one another if we all gave up? And at that moment the most important argument became my realization that if I gave up then, I would no longer be myself, but someone else."
The body of Yuri Verbitsky was found in the woods, brutalized, after being kidnapped from the hospital, where he had gone after being injured by police on the Maidan. He "had never been a radical. He was a fifty-five year old geologist who researched tectonic movements of the earth."
How people had to walk around the Maidan, because it was too cold to stand still. "Each person was a pixel, explained Yaroslav Hrytsak, and pixels always functioned together. People moved in groups, formed spontaneously. One night Yaroslav found himself pacing the Maidan with a philosopher friend, a businessman acquaintance, and the businessman's companion that evening, 'a tiny man with sad eyes' who worked as a professional clown for a charity benefitting children with cancer."
The concept of time getting distorted in the middle of a revolution. My mom reports similar feelings in Latvian protests as Latvia broke away from the Soviet Union. Marci Shore puts in here "when time was smashed."
That the hired or volunteering anti-Maidan movement "all looked sad." That a smile upon entering the Maidan was mark of shared identity.
"How to resist imperialism without succumbing to nationalism had long been a struggle, and not only for Ukrainians." --- an important tension, and something to think a lot about. What comes after the fall of empire. How to build something that resists other impulses of human control and exclusion. To at least one person, Yaroslav Hrytsak, "the Maidan was the place where a truly civic Ukrainian patriotism came in to being."
A dream of a revolution without violence, but "yet it turned out that not this time. Not this time."
"Nelia Vakhovska had never liked the slogan 'glory to Ukraine - glory to the heroes!' To her it stood for 'empty discourse about a nation, machismo, paramilitary discipline, the unruliness of radical right wing groups, the absence of a political or social programme.' Revolutions were populist by their nature; they strove for the reduction of complexity. Nelia did not like this either. She feared the glorification of victimhood, the cult of heroes and martyrs. Even so, she was continually drawn back to the Maidan."
In thinking about a point of fearlessness that is reached in protest and revolution... "On 18 February the Maidan reached the nonanalytical point. A critical mass had made a decision: they would die there if need be." (nonanalytical point: the point where all existing means of rational calculation break down)
"Where are you?" "I'm there."
After witnessing horrific murder at the hands of the riot police. Misha: "And it was as if, because of that, in me, too, there remained nothing human."
"Since they were still alive, they ordered tea."
"the solidarity of the shaken" - a phrase by Czech philosopher Jan Patocka, used in this book in the context of the Polish government lighting up a Stalin-era monument in the colors of the Ukrainian flag in 2014.
Jozef Tischner, philosopher: "Revolution is an event in the realm of the spirit. Each person has changed. In the new person, there is no trace of the clay from which were formed the former slave, vassal, work force. People cannot, even if they want to, regain their former shape. They now have different bones."
The Maidan as the return of metaphysics. "We've ceased posing questions to ourselves." "What kind of questions?" "Metaphysical questions. No one contemplates, for instance, where evil comes from."
"Misha, will you go there tomorrow?" "If there is a where to go to, then yes."
Misha suddenly feels fear that he might drop the box of explosives he is carrying, with the understanding that he was coming under sniper fire. "And he might have [dropped the box] had not a stranger just at that moment offered to help carry the box. And Misha's terror dissolved as quickly as it had appeared."
After the events of the Maidan, a feeling of not knowing what to do with oneself "They were unable to cease being revolutionaries."
Reflecting on the "revolutionary soul" -- "I had understood dedication. But I had not understood one thing - for me this was the limit of my own experience - I had not understood the moment when a person is ready to die. And there I understood it...it's a departure, a movement beyond the confines of the self, when you experience being with people who are ready to die for you, to make themselves vulnerable for you, to carry you if you're wounded... a willingness appears -- it's a kind of rapture, a wonder at the possibilities given to man, an enormous gratitude towards others [...] when a person is in such a state something appears that says that this experience of such enormous human solidarity is more important than the value of my individual life. And in such people the fear of death simply disappears, and there appears the conviction that because you are ready to die for me, I am ready to die for you. [not everyone experiences this] This is simply phenomenological [as opposed to good or bad], it has to be understood, because otherwise we will have understood nothing about revolution. Nothing."
"a moment when quantitative changes became so great as to become qualitative change" - technological revolution, using Hegel's words. Changes in scale become changes in kind.
"The Maidan set up its own cameras: the Ukrainian livestream live-streamed itself on YouTube. Around the world everyone could watch Ukrainians being shot to death in real time." -- thoughts on who controls the watching eye.
"A young paramedic, Olesia Zhukovska, blood pouring from her neck, typed on her phone, 'I am dying.' her Twitter message traveled around the globe in minutes. To strangers around the world, that message made [her] a real person. At once that message robbed death of its intimacy; and this self-violation of intimacy became the means for the assertion of selfhood."
In the events following Maidan, the annexation of Crimea, and war in the Donbas:
A message to Putin: "We highly value your concern about the safety and rights of Ukrainian national minorities. But we do not wish to be 'defended' by sundering Ukraine and annexing its territory."
Slava of the band Okean Elzy has a vision of "a country guided by civic patriotism" which "would be a truly national state, but a national state of a nation based not on a common language or ancestry, but rather on people who made a decision to see their future together."
On other European countries singling out Ukraine's right wing movements while sweeping their own under the rug "It was as if [...] Austria and France were gazing at Ukraine through the lens of projection, attributing to others what they could not accept in themselves."
"Europeans preferred to put Crimea out of their minds."
"Better that you enslave us, but feed us" (Dostoevsky) vs the comments of a Russian colleague "I think that social stability is more important than metaphysical freedom"
On right wing presence on Maidan "The context is somehow beyond the Western imagination. Yes, the far right was there, but it was a real revolution, and in a real revolution, all the oppositional forces are present." (Vasyl Mischenko, husband of a German translator)
In Dniprpetrovsk "Elsewhere in the city huge billboards declared Ukrainian patriotism in the Russian language: 'We take pride in living in Dniprpetrovsk! We are Ukrainian!' Russian speaking Dnipropetrovsk, on the Dnipro River deep in southeastern Ukraine, some 12o miles from the war in the Donbas, had become a bastion of Ukrainian patriotism."
"Democracy, he believed, could not be built using undemocratic methods" (--Pavlo, physicist)
"That Ukraine exists, that it has not disappeared, is not thanks to the government but in spite of the government" - Serhiy Zhadan.
Maidan as the "moment of truth" (Serhiy Zhadan) and "end of ambivalence" (Tatiana Zhurzhenko)
"If war did come to Dnipropetrovsk, [Oleg - local businessman] was certain that people would fight. The mood at the moment was very patriotic: everyone would defend his own street, his own home. 'I don't know if Putin understand this or not, but if they come here, we will likely slaughter them.' [...] 'Every second person sitting here [at the cafe] will take up arms.';"
"Precisely those Russian speaking regions of eastern Ukraine Putin had assumed would start flying Russian flags had produced the most volunteer battalions to fight the separatists."
"These Ukrainian values in any case had nothing to do with ethnicity or language, and Iurii (local businessman) insisted that the language issue was imaginary, a creation of Russian television. In Dnipropetrovsk, Russian was the dominant language of most of the population."
"For Valerii and Elena the Maidan meant the end of vassalship to Russia." .... Valerii: "This was my personal motivation for the fight on the Maidan: the complete break with Russia and the former Soviet Union. The Maidan was like a period, the end."
"Valerii and Elena regretted that they had to speak Russian to me -- let it be any language other than the language of their enemy, who lied and stole and murdered."
"'We are civilized people,' Elena said to me as she shook my hand in parting. 'We understand you, but you don't understand us.'"
"Mutual trust is also about mutual responsibility."
"'Sometimes I think that I'm the only one who believes that everything will turn out well. It's necessary to believe and it's necessary to act. Today, it seems to me, is a time of responsibility for every person, every person concretely. Every person is responsible for our future. Every one! Every person needs to decide.' Yet everyone was also very tired, and sometimes Anastasiia began to cry for no reason."
"The time was out of joint. In the Donbas, separatists were guarding the Lenin monuments, they were guarding the sanctity of the Soviet past. They were also guarding the sanctity of the tsarist past. All of it had gotten mixed together."
Some people being sad at statues being taken down, this was their "personal Lenin, it's where they used to kiss, where they stole roses from the flower beds." And, a response, "It's very difficult for the older generation to accept the changes. [...] It will seem strange to you, but we don't feel sorry for these people at all, and we do not even want to understand them."
The Russian Orthodox Army invading, but only being able to recite one prayer. "So which one of us is Orthodox?"
"Daddy, tomorrow will you still be here?"
"He was killed during a 'ceasefire.'"
On the propaganda that the Maidan was militarized coup. "And the military didn't take power here, the people rose up."
Interviews with members of a right wing group, it "is the only structure that has not sold out and will not sell out. With these people, I'm not afraid to go to war." The theme of prodazhnost' - corruption, saleability, The other ones all sell out. We cannot be bought.
"In a world where everyone could be bought, there was no trust among people."
(Some people reporting that they did not feel they could pay bribes after their experience on the Maidan)
On the Russian attack "This war is different because there were no reasons for it, They are all fictional. They are built on lies, spread by Russian television. There was no reason for people to kill each other. It is a theater of the absurd."
"Who wanted to revive the Soviet Union -- and who wanted to revive the tsarist empire?"
"'I was angry,' he said of how he reacted to the separatists that spring. 'I wanted to see the earth burn under their feet.'"
"you understand everything and you understand that the city is on your side, that the city is your ally" (fighting on home turf)
On reciting poetry as a means of maintaining sanity while imprisoned, Zhadan's lines: We have come here fatigued, resigned, and mute / Tell your people: there is no one left to shoot. "He believed that poetry had saved him" "When you're twenty-tree, poetry can save you."
"Later he understood: the moment he had desired [his enemy's death] was in some sense the moment of his own death as well." [thinking a lot that one of the terrors of war is this change in those attacked, the destruction of a peaceful people]
"He still held his cigarette not between two fingers, but rather in a fist, as had done on the Maidan, concealing the light and smoke."
"It was the 'I want' that affirmed our selfhood."
"I can die happy, having experienced a true democracy [maidan], something many people never see in their life."
"It's not important who you are, it's important that you're here, that you haven't run away."
There are many sections that I wanted to remember, poignant lines that speak to the specific experience of Maidan / the start of the war in 2014, that speak to the Ukrainian context generally, or that speak to the human experience generally. Here are some.
-----
"Jurko's mother, born in 1940 during the Red Army's occupation of Easter Galicia, had always been a Ukrainian patriot. As a girl growing up during late Stalinism she saw the disaster that Soviet rule was for her family: their property was expropriated; some relatives were shot; others lost their minds in prison. Even so, she wanted very much to sing the beautiful songs and believe that the Soviet Union wished for peace throughout the world. To Jurko she was deeply good, and deeply naive. He described her as 'an orchid, an orchid of catastrophe.'"
"Jurko had hoped that Ukraine would join Europe. Yet there were, as it turned out, more voiced on behalf of Soviet continuity. Jurko's was not an easy position: to reject continuity with communism; to reject the cult of Stepan Bandera and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. It was not easy to live ensconced in nostalgia for a world that had ceased to exist long before his own birth; to cling to a liberal nationalism whose moment had passed before it was ever realized; to insist on a gentle, anti-imperial patriotism, a vision of the Ukrainian nation realizing itself harmoniously with a cosmopolitan Ukrainian state."
The disillusionment with Yushchenko as a "cure for paternalism" -- "At the time we thought there was a bad father, and we had to replace the bad father with a good father. And now we no longer believe in a father at all."
The historic facebook post that brought largely student protestors to Maidan to protest Yanukovych's turn from the EU, ending with "likes don't count."
"On 30 November the novelist Yuri Andrukhovych was at the Lviv airport waiting for his flight to Vienna when he learned that the students in Kiev had been beaten. He did not get on the plane. Instead he left the airport and went to Kiev. Yanukovych had broken an unspoken social contract: in the two decades since independence, the government had never used this kind of violence against its own citizens."
"On 30 November Yanukovych was counting on parents to drag their children off the streets. He miscalculated."
On parents and others joining the student protestors -- "[parents] did not drag their sons and daughters off the streets. Instead they joined them there. [..] middle aged men with combat experience -- came to the Maidan to defend the students."
"'We will protect our children,' became the slogan -- even of those who did not have children themselves. 'It cannot be permitted,' Markiyan remembered two elderly women, one speaking Ukrainian and one speaking Russian, saying in Kiev. 'We cannot let them beat our children.'"
[here I think of how people joined the Maidan -- we won't let you beat our children. I think of the people on the streets in Iran now, of the video of two small children walking down the street yelling "we don't want a child-killing regime!"]
One slogan from Maidan that day -- "Let's bury the remains of Chernobyl in the Kremlin wall!"
The entire concept of parallel polis -- when protesting a regime, the idea that the protest movement itself must display the traits one wishes to see in the end result. The kitchens, the medics, any bit of infrastructure used to help the protest. And how this created a sense of safety there -- "'You're afraid before you go there. When you're there you're not afraid anymore.'" "Watching television [news reports of Maidan] made them too nervous. They felt safe only on the Maidan"
On everyone feeling brave and participating -- "Lena, 'the gentlest creature in the world,' as Ola described her, was a slightly plump woman less than five feet tall who walked with a limp. Ola had to pull her away from the riot policemen, because Lena felt compelled to tell each one of them how she felt about what he was doing." "[a young rabbi] broke the Sabbath for the first time in his adult life. He felt no ambivalence about this: he was protecting civilian lives."
Language on the Maidan -- "The division between Right and Left on the Maidan [...] had little if anything to do with language. Yanukovych repeatedly warned Ukrainians that the Maidan was full of Banderovtsy who would persecute Russian speakers and force them to speak only Ukrainian. Yet Russian, as much as Ukrainian, was the language of the Maidan. It was on the Maidan, the philosopher Taras Dobko told me, that Russian became for him a language of freedom." [resonates deeply for me -- I dream of a Russian language freed from the confines of empire. I want to practice a Russian language that does not signify allegiance to a state. A language that Putin cannot use to claim you, to kill in your name, to kill you in your name].
"'The value of personal freedom is not a fundamental law of physics' Slava told students in London, 'it's a choice.'"
after an activist in Kharkiv was stabbed, young historian Volodymyr Sklokin says "I think it was in those hours that I experienced what at one time or another every participant in a revolution experiences. My reason said that resistance made no sense, that it would make more sense to await a better moment to change the regime. I asked myself what we could possibly do against a regime that controlled the militia and was willing to behave criminally. [...] My reason said: better not to do anything [...] And then I asked myself how I would look in the eyes of [fellow activist] if I did not come to the meeting that day. How would we look to one another if we all gave up? And at that moment the most important argument became my realization that if I gave up then, I would no longer be myself, but someone else."
The body of Yuri Verbitsky was found in the woods, brutalized, after being kidnapped from the hospital, where he had gone after being injured by police on the Maidan. He "had never been a radical. He was a fifty-five year old geologist who researched tectonic movements of the earth."
How people had to walk around the Maidan, because it was too cold to stand still. "Each person was a pixel, explained Yaroslav Hrytsak, and pixels always functioned together. People moved in groups, formed spontaneously. One night Yaroslav found himself pacing the Maidan with a philosopher friend, a businessman acquaintance, and the businessman's companion that evening, 'a tiny man with sad eyes' who worked as a professional clown for a charity benefitting children with cancer."
The concept of time getting distorted in the middle of a revolution. My mom reports similar feelings in Latvian protests as Latvia broke away from the Soviet Union. Marci Shore puts in here "when time was smashed."
That the hired or volunteering anti-Maidan movement "all looked sad." That a smile upon entering the Maidan was mark of shared identity.
"How to resist imperialism without succumbing to nationalism had long been a struggle, and not only for Ukrainians." --- an important tension, and something to think a lot about. What comes after the fall of empire. How to build something that resists other impulses of human control and exclusion. To at least one person, Yaroslav Hrytsak, "the Maidan was the place where a truly civic Ukrainian patriotism came in to being."
A dream of a revolution without violence, but "yet it turned out that not this time. Not this time."
"Nelia Vakhovska had never liked the slogan 'glory to Ukraine - glory to the heroes!' To her it stood for 'empty discourse about a nation, machismo, paramilitary discipline, the unruliness of radical right wing groups, the absence of a political or social programme.' Revolutions were populist by their nature; they strove for the reduction of complexity. Nelia did not like this either. She feared the glorification of victimhood, the cult of heroes and martyrs. Even so, she was continually drawn back to the Maidan."
In thinking about a point of fearlessness that is reached in protest and revolution... "On 18 February the Maidan reached the nonanalytical point. A critical mass had made a decision: they would die there if need be." (nonanalytical point: the point where all existing means of rational calculation break down)
"Where are you?" "I'm there."
After witnessing horrific murder at the hands of the riot police. Misha: "And it was as if, because of that, in me, too, there remained nothing human."
"Since they were still alive, they ordered tea."
"the solidarity of the shaken" - a phrase by Czech philosopher Jan Patocka, used in this book in the context of the Polish government lighting up a Stalin-era monument in the colors of the Ukrainian flag in 2014.
Jozef Tischner, philosopher: "Revolution is an event in the realm of the spirit. Each person has changed. In the new person, there is no trace of the clay from which were formed the former slave, vassal, work force. People cannot, even if they want to, regain their former shape. They now have different bones."
The Maidan as the return of metaphysics. "We've ceased posing questions to ourselves." "What kind of questions?" "Metaphysical questions. No one contemplates, for instance, where evil comes from."
"Misha, will you go there tomorrow?" "If there is a where to go to, then yes."
Misha suddenly feels fear that he might drop the box of explosives he is carrying, with the understanding that he was coming under sniper fire. "And he might have [dropped the box] had not a stranger just at that moment offered to help carry the box. And Misha's terror dissolved as quickly as it had appeared."
After the events of the Maidan, a feeling of not knowing what to do with oneself "They were unable to cease being revolutionaries."
Reflecting on the "revolutionary soul" -- "I had understood dedication. But I had not understood one thing - for me this was the limit of my own experience - I had not understood the moment when a person is ready to die. And there I understood it...it's a departure, a movement beyond the confines of the self, when you experience being with people who are ready to die for you, to make themselves vulnerable for you, to carry you if you're wounded... a willingness appears -- it's a kind of rapture, a wonder at the possibilities given to man, an enormous gratitude towards others [...] when a person is in such a state something appears that says that this experience of such enormous human solidarity is more important than the value of my individual life. And in such people the fear of death simply disappears, and there appears the conviction that because you are ready to die for me, I am ready to die for you. [not everyone experiences this] This is simply phenomenological [as opposed to good or bad], it has to be understood, because otherwise we will have understood nothing about revolution. Nothing."
"a moment when quantitative changes became so great as to become qualitative change" - technological revolution, using Hegel's words. Changes in scale become changes in kind.
"The Maidan set up its own cameras: the Ukrainian livestream live-streamed itself on YouTube. Around the world everyone could watch Ukrainians being shot to death in real time." -- thoughts on who controls the watching eye.
"A young paramedic, Olesia Zhukovska, blood pouring from her neck, typed on her phone, 'I am dying.' her Twitter message traveled around the globe in minutes. To strangers around the world, that message made [her] a real person. At once that message robbed death of its intimacy; and this self-violation of intimacy became the means for the assertion of selfhood."
In the events following Maidan, the annexation of Crimea, and war in the Donbas:
A message to Putin: "We highly value your concern about the safety and rights of Ukrainian national minorities. But we do not wish to be 'defended' by sundering Ukraine and annexing its territory."
Slava of the band Okean Elzy has a vision of "a country guided by civic patriotism" which "would be a truly national state, but a national state of a nation based not on a common language or ancestry, but rather on people who made a decision to see their future together."
On other European countries singling out Ukraine's right wing movements while sweeping their own under the rug "It was as if [...] Austria and France were gazing at Ukraine through the lens of projection, attributing to others what they could not accept in themselves."
"Europeans preferred to put Crimea out of their minds."
"Better that you enslave us, but feed us" (Dostoevsky) vs the comments of a Russian colleague "I think that social stability is more important than metaphysical freedom"
On right wing presence on Maidan "The context is somehow beyond the Western imagination. Yes, the far right was there, but it was a real revolution, and in a real revolution, all the oppositional forces are present." (Vasyl Mischenko, husband of a German translator)
In Dniprpetrovsk "Elsewhere in the city huge billboards declared Ukrainian patriotism in the Russian language: 'We take pride in living in Dniprpetrovsk! We are Ukrainian!' Russian speaking Dnipropetrovsk, on the Dnipro River deep in southeastern Ukraine, some 12o miles from the war in the Donbas, had become a bastion of Ukrainian patriotism."
"Democracy, he believed, could not be built using undemocratic methods" (--Pavlo, physicist)
"That Ukraine exists, that it has not disappeared, is not thanks to the government but in spite of the government" - Serhiy Zhadan.
Maidan as the "moment of truth" (Serhiy Zhadan) and "end of ambivalence" (Tatiana Zhurzhenko)
"If war did come to Dnipropetrovsk, [Oleg - local businessman] was certain that people would fight. The mood at the moment was very patriotic: everyone would defend his own street, his own home. 'I don't know if Putin understand this or not, but if they come here, we will likely slaughter them.' [...] 'Every second person sitting here [at the cafe] will take up arms.';"
"Precisely those Russian speaking regions of eastern Ukraine Putin had assumed would start flying Russian flags had produced the most volunteer battalions to fight the separatists."
"These Ukrainian values in any case had nothing to do with ethnicity or language, and Iurii (local businessman) insisted that the language issue was imaginary, a creation of Russian television. In Dnipropetrovsk, Russian was the dominant language of most of the population."
"For Valerii and Elena the Maidan meant the end of vassalship to Russia." .... Valerii: "This was my personal motivation for the fight on the Maidan: the complete break with Russia and the former Soviet Union. The Maidan was like a period, the end."
"Valerii and Elena regretted that they had to speak Russian to me -- let it be any language other than the language of their enemy, who lied and stole and murdered."
"'We are civilized people,' Elena said to me as she shook my hand in parting. 'We understand you, but you don't understand us.'"
"Mutual trust is also about mutual responsibility."
"'Sometimes I think that I'm the only one who believes that everything will turn out well. It's necessary to believe and it's necessary to act. Today, it seems to me, is a time of responsibility for every person, every person concretely. Every person is responsible for our future. Every one! Every person needs to decide.' Yet everyone was also very tired, and sometimes Anastasiia began to cry for no reason."
"The time was out of joint. In the Donbas, separatists were guarding the Lenin monuments, they were guarding the sanctity of the Soviet past. They were also guarding the sanctity of the tsarist past. All of it had gotten mixed together."
Some people being sad at statues being taken down, this was their "personal Lenin, it's where they used to kiss, where they stole roses from the flower beds." And, a response, "It's very difficult for the older generation to accept the changes. [...] It will seem strange to you, but we don't feel sorry for these people at all, and we do not even want to understand them."
The Russian Orthodox Army invading, but only being able to recite one prayer. "So which one of us is Orthodox?"
"Daddy, tomorrow will you still be here?"
"He was killed during a 'ceasefire.'"
On the propaganda that the Maidan was militarized coup. "And the military didn't take power here, the people rose up."
Interviews with members of a right wing group, it "is the only structure that has not sold out and will not sell out. With these people, I'm not afraid to go to war." The theme of prodazhnost' - corruption, saleability, The other ones all sell out. We cannot be bought.
"In a world where everyone could be bought, there was no trust among people."
(Some people reporting that they did not feel they could pay bribes after their experience on the Maidan)
On the Russian attack "This war is different because there were no reasons for it, They are all fictional. They are built on lies, spread by Russian television. There was no reason for people to kill each other. It is a theater of the absurd."
"Who wanted to revive the Soviet Union -- and who wanted to revive the tsarist empire?"
"'I was angry,' he said of how he reacted to the separatists that spring. 'I wanted to see the earth burn under their feet.'"
"you understand everything and you understand that the city is on your side, that the city is your ally" (fighting on home turf)
On reciting poetry as a means of maintaining sanity while imprisoned, Zhadan's lines: We have come here fatigued, resigned, and mute / Tell your people: there is no one left to shoot. "He believed that poetry had saved him" "When you're twenty-tree, poetry can save you."
"Later he understood: the moment he had desired [his enemy's death] was in some sense the moment of his own death as well." [thinking a lot that one of the terrors of war is this change in those attacked, the destruction of a peaceful people]
"He still held his cigarette not between two fingers, but rather in a fist, as had done on the Maidan, concealing the light and smoke."
"It was the 'I want' that affirmed our selfhood."
"I can die happy, having experienced a true democracy [maidan], something many people never see in their life."
"It's not important who you are, it's important that you're here, that you haven't run away."
March 4, 2023
Do you know the Ukrainian night? No, you do not know the Ukrainian night! Here the sky turns black from smoke . . . —Vladimir Mayakovsky (1926)
Published in 2018, this is the story of the Ukrainian Revolution of 2013-14, the Revolution of Dignity, when Ukrainians rose up to claim freedom from russian political control, as witnessed by individuals who participated in the momentous events on the Maidan and its aftermath.
Shore begins by analyzing the roots of the Revolution: the Galician heritage, a gruesome civil war, savage collectivization, the Holodomor, the Great Terror, and World War II with its pogroms and genocides. What followed in 1991 was a collapse of the USSR but not a revolution. Ukraine achieved independence but not a clean break from its Soviet past. Lingering nostalgia for its communist past was widespread.
... this was not Czechoslovakia where Václav Havel was elected, or Poland where Lech Wałęsa was elected; this was someplace else—and “we will suffer for a long, long, long time in this post-Soviet purgatory.” —Jurko Prochasko
Ukraine's first president Leonid Kuchma was a former secretary of ideology and member of the old Soviet Politburo. Kuchma's chosen successor, Viktor Yanukovych, was a criminal, oligarch, and corrupt politician. However after Yanukovych claimed victory in the 2004 election (and his opponent was poisoned) there was a large protest — the "Orange Revolution" — which forced another election later that year. The winner was the previously poisoned Viktor Yushchenko. Unfortunately Yushchenko was a disappointment and Yanukovych was reelected in 2010. This was a self-inflicted wound and Ukrainians suffered under the subsequent corruption and criminality. On November 21, 2013, Yanukovych refused to sign the association agreement with the EU and the fire was lit.
Around eight o��clock that evening a thirty-two-year-old Afghan-Ukrainian journalist named Mustafa Nayyem, who had reported on xenophobia and corruption for the news site Ukrayinska Pravda, posted a note on his Facebook page: “Come on, let’s get serious. Who is ready to go out to the Maidan by midnight tonight? ‘Likes’ don’t count.”
The protest began small and quiet, and was mostly composed of young people. However as the days went by, people started demonstrating in other cities and/or traveling to the Maidan. At the end of November, riot police beat many students in Kyiv and attacked them with tear gas. When word spread about the violence, crowds swelled with angry parents and shocked citizens kicked the protest into a higher gear. The group started getting organized and people who had been indifferent realized that they needed to get directly involved. Veterans of the Orange Revolution returned to the streets.
Misha Martynenko had never seen as many people in one place as he saw on 1 December. This was the day Euromaidan became “Maidan,” with no prefix.
From this point on, Shore gives us perspectives from a variety of participants — teachers, students, doctors, philosophers, peasants, musicians, clerics — and from all religious and political persuasions. When Yanukovych forced the passage of "dictatorship laws" on January 16th, the rubicon was crossed. There was no law and no protection from the government. There was a radical shift and everyone knew it.
After 16 January everyone understood that no one would be safe as long as Yanukovych remained in power. He had raised the stakes: now it was all or nothing.
In addition to punishing people on the Maidan, Yanukovych's goons started kidnapping injured protesters from hospitals. When the Automaidan guards came to the hospitals, they were also beaten and kidnapped. On February 18th, the Maidan had reached a "nonanalytical point" and a critical mass decided they would succeed or die.
“The shaken” were those who had experienced descent into an abyss, an intimate encounter with mortality, “the transformation of the meaning of life which here trips on nothingness, on a boundary over which it cannot step, along which everything is transformed.”
“The solidarity of the shaken,” Patočka wrote, “is the solidarity of those who understand.”
On Friday, February 20 (2014), negotiations began directly with Yanukovych by the Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski (with approval of the EU), Putin's Human Rights Commissioner (an older experienced diplomat) and the opposition leaders. Negotiations lasted all day and all night. In the end, Yanukovych was given until December to step down but left within a few hours after an agreement was reached. On Saturday, a few protesters gathered on the abandoned square, not sure what to do next. They felt committed to make sure the aims of the Revolution were fulfilled. They felt a responsibility to the 106 people who had died.
Following the events in Kyiv, demonstrators in Kharkiv, Crimea, Donbass and several southern cities — like Odesa — clashed. In addition to Ukrainian protesters, Russian provocateurs and militias popped up across the region. Separatists exhibited a variety of motivations from religious affiliations to ethnic nationalism to imperial nostalgia.
In May Moscow dispatched to Donetsk the Vostok Battalion, Chechnya-based Russian special forces.
... at the time no one in Donetsk seemed to know why the Chechens were there, “they just appeared on the streets like the little green men in Crimea.”
Europeans did not want to think about or deal with the annexation of Crimea. No one wanted to fight a war with Russia.The passive condoning of Putin's illegal acts was on a level with Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler.
“That Ukraine exists, that it has not disappeared, is not thanks to the government but in spite of the government,” Serhiy Zhadan told me.
By 2015, local groups were forming to help deal with the conflict in the south. The state was still in turmoil, there was a new president, and was not functioning effectively. Local volunteers were supplying and training the army, feeding and housing refugees as well as dealing with countless gangsters, despite these being responsibilities of the state.
“The volunteer movement that arose in Dnipropetrovsk is unprecedented,” [local businessman Oleg Marchuk]
There are many families in the Donbas and Crimea who were estranged by the Revolution. Generally it's younger generations who support it and older ones who cling to Russian nostalgia or perceived security, but not always. For many in Donbas, the Enlightenment never happened. The only reality is what they experience in their daily lives and looking backward is more reassuring than the future.
The war broke up families horizontally as well, estranging brothers, sisters, and cousins, husbands and wives. Many people in Ukraine had close family in Russia; many had themselves lived in Russia ...
To tell the story of the Revolution, Shore has gathered testimony and related personal experiences from a variety of eyewitnesses to history. Seeing events from the perspective of the participants gives them a personal and evocative quality. We not only learn what happened but how people felt about what was happening as well as their part in the drama of current events. And that is what matters, what each of us do with the time we are given and in the places we find ourselves.
Theirs was “a civilizational choice”: to be free of Russia, to be part of Europe, where Ukraine had been three or four centuries ago. “Civilization,” a neologism of the eighteenth century French Enlightenment, meant that the disorder and brutality of the state of nature had been overcome. That was what Valerii and Elena wanted, and this was how they understood themselves.
There would never be a successful revolution were it not for the feeling that idealism lives not only in me, but also in him, and also in her, and also in her, and so on and so on . . . A wonderful discovery of what a person is capable of. It utterly, utterly changes a person. But the experience of people’s revealing themselves as possessing such expansive souls—this cannot be replaced by anything else and cannot be bought for any price.
Published in 2018, this is the story of the Ukrainian Revolution of 2013-14, the Revolution of Dignity, when Ukrainians rose up to claim freedom from russian political control, as witnessed by individuals who participated in the momentous events on the Maidan and its aftermath.
Shore begins by analyzing the roots of the Revolution: the Galician heritage, a gruesome civil war, savage collectivization, the Holodomor, the Great Terror, and World War II with its pogroms and genocides. What followed in 1991 was a collapse of the USSR but not a revolution. Ukraine achieved independence but not a clean break from its Soviet past. Lingering nostalgia for its communist past was widespread.
... this was not Czechoslovakia where Václav Havel was elected, or Poland where Lech Wałęsa was elected; this was someplace else—and “we will suffer for a long, long, long time in this post-Soviet purgatory.” —Jurko Prochasko
Ukraine's first president Leonid Kuchma was a former secretary of ideology and member of the old Soviet Politburo. Kuchma's chosen successor, Viktor Yanukovych, was a criminal, oligarch, and corrupt politician. However after Yanukovych claimed victory in the 2004 election (and his opponent was poisoned) there was a large protest — the "Orange Revolution" — which forced another election later that year. The winner was the previously poisoned Viktor Yushchenko. Unfortunately Yushchenko was a disappointment and Yanukovych was reelected in 2010. This was a self-inflicted wound and Ukrainians suffered under the subsequent corruption and criminality. On November 21, 2013, Yanukovych refused to sign the association agreement with the EU and the fire was lit.
Around eight o��clock that evening a thirty-two-year-old Afghan-Ukrainian journalist named Mustafa Nayyem, who had reported on xenophobia and corruption for the news site Ukrayinska Pravda, posted a note on his Facebook page: “Come on, let’s get serious. Who is ready to go out to the Maidan by midnight tonight? ‘Likes’ don’t count.”
The protest began small and quiet, and was mostly composed of young people. However as the days went by, people started demonstrating in other cities and/or traveling to the Maidan. At the end of November, riot police beat many students in Kyiv and attacked them with tear gas. When word spread about the violence, crowds swelled with angry parents and shocked citizens kicked the protest into a higher gear. The group started getting organized and people who had been indifferent realized that they needed to get directly involved. Veterans of the Orange Revolution returned to the streets.
Misha Martynenko had never seen as many people in one place as he saw on 1 December. This was the day Euromaidan became “Maidan,” with no prefix.
From this point on, Shore gives us perspectives from a variety of participants — teachers, students, doctors, philosophers, peasants, musicians, clerics — and from all religious and political persuasions. When Yanukovych forced the passage of "dictatorship laws" on January 16th, the rubicon was crossed. There was no law and no protection from the government. There was a radical shift and everyone knew it.
After 16 January everyone understood that no one would be safe as long as Yanukovych remained in power. He had raised the stakes: now it was all or nothing.
In addition to punishing people on the Maidan, Yanukovych's goons started kidnapping injured protesters from hospitals. When the Automaidan guards came to the hospitals, they were also beaten and kidnapped. On February 18th, the Maidan had reached a "nonanalytical point" and a critical mass decided they would succeed or die.
“The shaken” were those who had experienced descent into an abyss, an intimate encounter with mortality, “the transformation of the meaning of life which here trips on nothingness, on a boundary over which it cannot step, along which everything is transformed.”
“The solidarity of the shaken,” Patočka wrote, “is the solidarity of those who understand.”
On Friday, February 20 (2014), negotiations began directly with Yanukovych by the Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski (with approval of the EU), Putin's Human Rights Commissioner (an older experienced diplomat) and the opposition leaders. Negotiations lasted all day and all night. In the end, Yanukovych was given until December to step down but left within a few hours after an agreement was reached. On Saturday, a few protesters gathered on the abandoned square, not sure what to do next. They felt committed to make sure the aims of the Revolution were fulfilled. They felt a responsibility to the 106 people who had died.
Following the events in Kyiv, demonstrators in Kharkiv, Crimea, Donbass and several southern cities — like Odesa — clashed. In addition to Ukrainian protesters, Russian provocateurs and militias popped up across the region. Separatists exhibited a variety of motivations from religious affiliations to ethnic nationalism to imperial nostalgia.
In May Moscow dispatched to Donetsk the Vostok Battalion, Chechnya-based Russian special forces.
... at the time no one in Donetsk seemed to know why the Chechens were there, “they just appeared on the streets like the little green men in Crimea.”
Europeans did not want to think about or deal with the annexation of Crimea. No one wanted to fight a war with Russia.The passive condoning of Putin's illegal acts was on a level with Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler.
“That Ukraine exists, that it has not disappeared, is not thanks to the government but in spite of the government,” Serhiy Zhadan told me.
By 2015, local groups were forming to help deal with the conflict in the south. The state was still in turmoil, there was a new president, and was not functioning effectively. Local volunteers were supplying and training the army, feeding and housing refugees as well as dealing with countless gangsters, despite these being responsibilities of the state.
“The volunteer movement that arose in Dnipropetrovsk is unprecedented,” [local businessman Oleg Marchuk]
There are many families in the Donbas and Crimea who were estranged by the Revolution. Generally it's younger generations who support it and older ones who cling to Russian nostalgia or perceived security, but not always. For many in Donbas, the Enlightenment never happened. The only reality is what they experience in their daily lives and looking backward is more reassuring than the future.
The war broke up families horizontally as well, estranging brothers, sisters, and cousins, husbands and wives. Many people in Ukraine had close family in Russia; many had themselves lived in Russia ...
To tell the story of the Revolution, Shore has gathered testimony and related personal experiences from a variety of eyewitnesses to history. Seeing events from the perspective of the participants gives them a personal and evocative quality. We not only learn what happened but how people felt about what was happening as well as their part in the drama of current events. And that is what matters, what each of us do with the time we are given and in the places we find ourselves.
Theirs was “a civilizational choice”: to be free of Russia, to be part of Europe, where Ukraine had been three or four centuries ago. “Civilization,” a neologism of the eighteenth century French Enlightenment, meant that the disorder and brutality of the state of nature had been overcome. That was what Valerii and Elena wanted, and this was how they understood themselves.
There would never be a successful revolution were it not for the feeling that idealism lives not only in me, but also in him, and also in her, and also in her, and so on and so on . . . A wonderful discovery of what a person is capable of. It utterly, utterly changes a person. But the experience of people’s revealing themselves as possessing such expansive souls—this cannot be replaced by anything else and cannot be bought for any price.
October 25, 2022
Absolute nonsense. First the lack of description of Stepan Bandera and his fascist mythology is very telling indeed. The author also conveniently leaves out that "Glory to the Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!" Was INVENTED by Bandera and the first time it was uttered was at his trial. A blatant lie that people in Ukraine of any generation younger than soviet doesn't know who Bandera is, they children are taught about him in school and sing songs of his heroism interestingly leaving out the antisemitism.
To call the absolute genocide of Poles of Volyn a mutual ethnic cleansing is almost laughable if it weren't excruciatingly sad.
She also falls incredibly short of describing what a disgusting person Yulia Tymoshenko is though I guess anyone with the nickname "gas princess" should be expected to be god awful.
She also misspells Donbass and the cities therein, which is petty on my part I suppose. No description of the absolute terror that gripped those of us from Crimea and Donbass as we heard the stories of right wing snipers on rooftops provoking the Berkut. No stories from Crimeans who knew of the buses full of Nazis from maidan coming to kill them.
Not even an allusion to the truth that Maiden was provoked and stoked by the EU and the USA so they could further plunge that country into kleptocracy and corruption but the maidan was fun? I guess.
One of the most hilarious parts for me, as a Jew, was when she lauded a man who served in the IDF in Gaza Strip of all places and calls himself a Zhid (derogatory term for jew) Banderite (yes the nazi who killed his Ukrainian brethren).
Oh and the Odessa massacre? The author describes it as a mutual fight where a fire just happened to break out. Eyewitness testimony and videos have shown the world that it was Ukrainians who were killing ethnic Russians. She allows the speakers in her book to perpetuate stereotypes of Donbassians as country bumpkins and uneducated communists.
The chapter "We Cannot Be Bought" the author goes and visits a Right Sector office but for some reason doesn't tell the readers that Right Sector was very adamant about rehabilitating the OUN and having their rallies at the Bandera statue as well as the Babyn Yar monument. Yes, the author hangs out with far right fascists who she humanizes as "fighting for an idea" without hinting as to what idea this entire organization was founded upon.
Just an all around ignorant, offensive book written by another imperialist who is just fine with spreading the Ukrainian victimhood narrative without placing guilt where it actually belongs. However, I'd be more interested in reading a book written by the authors friend, Polina. She seems much more levelheaded.
To call the absolute genocide of Poles of Volyn a mutual ethnic cleansing is almost laughable if it weren't excruciatingly sad.
She also falls incredibly short of describing what a disgusting person Yulia Tymoshenko is though I guess anyone with the nickname "gas princess" should be expected to be god awful.
She also misspells Donbass and the cities therein, which is petty on my part I suppose. No description of the absolute terror that gripped those of us from Crimea and Donbass as we heard the stories of right wing snipers on rooftops provoking the Berkut. No stories from Crimeans who knew of the buses full of Nazis from maidan coming to kill them.
Not even an allusion to the truth that Maiden was provoked and stoked by the EU and the USA so they could further plunge that country into kleptocracy and corruption but the maidan was fun? I guess.
One of the most hilarious parts for me, as a Jew, was when she lauded a man who served in the IDF in Gaza Strip of all places and calls himself a Zhid (derogatory term for jew) Banderite (yes the nazi who killed his Ukrainian brethren).
Oh and the Odessa massacre? The author describes it as a mutual fight where a fire just happened to break out. Eyewitness testimony and videos have shown the world that it was Ukrainians who were killing ethnic Russians. She allows the speakers in her book to perpetuate stereotypes of Donbassians as country bumpkins and uneducated communists.
The chapter "We Cannot Be Bought" the author goes and visits a Right Sector office but for some reason doesn't tell the readers that Right Sector was very adamant about rehabilitating the OUN and having their rallies at the Bandera statue as well as the Babyn Yar monument. Yes, the author hangs out with far right fascists who she humanizes as "fighting for an idea" without hinting as to what idea this entire organization was founded upon.
Just an all around ignorant, offensive book written by another imperialist who is just fine with spreading the Ukrainian victimhood narrative without placing guilt where it actually belongs. However, I'd be more interested in reading a book written by the authors friend, Polina. She seems much more levelheaded.
August 8, 2018
In this brilliantly written book, Marci Shore tells true stories of real people who participated in the Revolution of Dignity, anti-authoritarian and anti-corruption protests against the regime of Viktor Yanukovych that brought hundreds of thousands of people to the streets in November 2013-February 2014, and in defending their homeland against the war that Putin's totalitarian Russia wages on modern democratic Ukraine, truth and reason.
February 27, 2018
Marci Shore's sensitive and lyrical text captures the cultural and emotional underpinnings of events in Ukraine that gained fleeting notice in the West during the 2014-2014 Maidan revolution and 2014 invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine by Russian operatives.
March 26, 2018
I wouldn't except a philosophically oriented history to be both accessible and powerful, but Marci Shore manages to pull it off. The pacing and writing style made for some truly memorable moments for me as a reader. The recency of the events makes it particularly poignant.
Read
November 5, 2019“Revolution should abolish self-alienation by creating truly human society and truly human man.” Gajo Petrovic
The very idea of a revolution, a theme repeated throughout the Ukrainian Night, takes on a semi-divine experience amongst the population who participated in it. What started out as a protest against Viktor Yanukovich's decision to not join an association agreement with the European Union catalyzed into a movement in launching Ukraine into the future, towards democracy, state of law, and their own identity. However, just because they got Yanukovich to flee to Russia, doesn't mean the whole thing was over. Another war rose in the east, with Russia annexing Crimea and unleashing a war which saw two eastern provinces seeking autonomy. In that chaos, that's where the main battle lies.
Marci Shore does a good job in finding her sources, ranging from Slava Vakarchuk, the lead singer of the rock band Okean Elzy; to writers, scholars, and people who are worried about their families. She interviews Juroko Porchasko, a Ukrainian translator and essayist who takes a keen interest in Galicia; but also interviews Polina, who believed that the revolution wasn't as great as it is supposed to be. Despite getting a wide variety of perspectives, they all end up muddied together in the chapters they are in, a kaleidoscope which conveys no meaning.
Shore briefly explains the history of Ukraine in the early chapters, divided between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian tsardom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and how it configures itself through the World Wars and when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. Today, "twenty-first century Ukraine was heir to the grandeur of these intentions, to daring experiments" (7). It plays to Ukraine's very name, which means "borderland". Anybody who wants to know about Ukrainian history in a nutshell should focus on this segment, as it defines how people view their country. If you want something more in-depth, then something else may be better for you.
Shore focuses on the very essence of the Maidan as a meeting place, without romanticizing it too much. "This was also the premise of revolution itself: at any moment everything could change...Temporality took on a new form. It was essential to act in real time, even as the present felt so fugitive is to be imperceptible" (71). Based on the interviews she presented, it took on this view, but this almost philosophical take on the protests almost takes away the substance of it.
If you want something that reflects the politics of their time and the people talking about it, tue Ukrainian Night is your call. Just be prepared to open to a bunch of stories. (6.5/10)
The very idea of a revolution, a theme repeated throughout the Ukrainian Night, takes on a semi-divine experience amongst the population who participated in it. What started out as a protest against Viktor Yanukovich's decision to not join an association agreement with the European Union catalyzed into a movement in launching Ukraine into the future, towards democracy, state of law, and their own identity. However, just because they got Yanukovich to flee to Russia, doesn't mean the whole thing was over. Another war rose in the east, with Russia annexing Crimea and unleashing a war which saw two eastern provinces seeking autonomy. In that chaos, that's where the main battle lies.
Marci Shore does a good job in finding her sources, ranging from Slava Vakarchuk, the lead singer of the rock band Okean Elzy; to writers, scholars, and people who are worried about their families. She interviews Juroko Porchasko, a Ukrainian translator and essayist who takes a keen interest in Galicia; but also interviews Polina, who believed that the revolution wasn't as great as it is supposed to be. Despite getting a wide variety of perspectives, they all end up muddied together in the chapters they are in, a kaleidoscope which conveys no meaning.
Shore briefly explains the history of Ukraine in the early chapters, divided between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian tsardom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and how it configures itself through the World Wars and when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. Today, "twenty-first century Ukraine was heir to the grandeur of these intentions, to daring experiments" (7). It plays to Ukraine's very name, which means "borderland". Anybody who wants to know about Ukrainian history in a nutshell should focus on this segment, as it defines how people view their country. If you want something more in-depth, then something else may be better for you.
Shore focuses on the very essence of the Maidan as a meeting place, without romanticizing it too much. "This was also the premise of revolution itself: at any moment everything could change...Temporality took on a new form. It was essential to act in real time, even as the present felt so fugitive is to be imperceptible" (71). Based on the interviews she presented, it took on this view, but this almost philosophical take on the protests almost takes away the substance of it.
If you want something that reflects the politics of their time and the people talking about it, tue Ukrainian Night is your call. Just be prepared to open to a bunch of stories. (6.5/10)
June 13, 2019
The Ukrainian Night is an eminently readable account of the 2013-14 Euromaidan revolution, as well as experiences of volunteers in the war in Donbas, that sits somewhere between nonfiction, philosophy, and history. Some prior knowledge of the basic events of Euromaidan and the Donbas war is helpful, but the book provides ample refreshers for those who need a quick touch-up.
A lot of Western writers write about Euromaidan and perceptions of the revolution in western Ukraine, but not as many try to understand popular opinion and political cultures in eastern Ukraine. So Shore's extensive sections on Dnipropetrovsk and political culture in the Donbas are highly welcome and a great starting point for further exploration. Probably the biggest issue I had was with the lack of citations in the text. There is a list of sources for each chapter in the back, but I would have liked to be able to immediately look up the source for a quote.
The footnotes issue speaks to a larger issue with the book: the genre is a hybrid of journalism-style prose and scholarly, carefully researched philosophical analysis. The general public may not understand some parts of the book, while academics may find the book insufficiently rigorously argued. However, the hybridity of genres is not necessarily a problem: because it draws both on direct interviews and scholarly analysis, The Ukrainian Night is well suited for undergraduates still learning about Ukrainian history, and people following current events may find the scholarly analysis enormously helpful in understanding why Euromaidan still figures so heavily in Ukrainian political discourse and why the Donbas situation is so gnarly.
Overall, The Ukrainian Night is an informative read. But as with any complex historical/political topic, don't make it your only reading on Euromaidan or the war in Donbas.
A lot of Western writers write about Euromaidan and perceptions of the revolution in western Ukraine, but not as many try to understand popular opinion and political cultures in eastern Ukraine. So Shore's extensive sections on Dnipropetrovsk and political culture in the Donbas are highly welcome and a great starting point for further exploration. Probably the biggest issue I had was with the lack of citations in the text. There is a list of sources for each chapter in the back, but I would have liked to be able to immediately look up the source for a quote.
The footnotes issue speaks to a larger issue with the book: the genre is a hybrid of journalism-style prose and scholarly, carefully researched philosophical analysis. The general public may not understand some parts of the book, while academics may find the book insufficiently rigorously argued. However, the hybridity of genres is not necessarily a problem: because it draws both on direct interviews and scholarly analysis, The Ukrainian Night is well suited for undergraduates still learning about Ukrainian history, and people following current events may find the scholarly analysis enormously helpful in understanding why Euromaidan still figures so heavily in Ukrainian political discourse and why the Donbas situation is so gnarly.
Overall, The Ukrainian Night is an informative read. But as with any complex historical/political topic, don't make it your only reading on Euromaidan or the war in Donbas.
April 3, 2022
2,5*
Do „Ukraińskiej nocy” przystąpiłam z nadzieją, że uporządkuje moją wiedzę o wydarzeniach na Majdanie, jak i jego następstwach, a w najlepszym wypadku poszerzy jeszcze moją wiedzę o niuanse z tamtego okresu. A przecież relacje uczestników tych wydarzeń z pewnością mogą dać jeszcze szerszy obraz.
Niestety, jeśli liczycie, na to co ja, mocno się rozczarujecie. Książka pozostawiła mnie z ogromnym poczuciem chaosu. Autorka faktycznie przedstawiła kilka kluczowych faktów z tamtego okresu, niezbędnych do wyciągnięcia podstawowych wniosków przyczynowo skutkowych, ale obraz rewolucji jaka dokonała się w Ukrainie był z tego prawie żaden.
Często odnosiłam wrażenie, że mimo, iż narracja (co do zasady) biegła chronologicznie, to autorka gubiła rytm. Warto tutaj zaznaczyć, że książka jest podzielona na dwie części – wydarzenia z Majdanu oraz następstwa w rejonie Donbasu. Zdarzało się, że wspomnienia należące do części pierwszej znajdowały się bez większego uzasadnienia w części drugiej. Część wspomnień (choć ciekawych) zdawała mi się w ogóle nie mieć sensu w tej konkretnej książce.
Ale przechodząc do pozytywów. Gdy odłoży się na bok oczekiwania związane z zapoznaniem się z samymi wydarzeniami i przymknie oko na chaos mamy wspaniałą książkę o dojrzałości, samoświadomości oraz odwadze Ukraińców. Z opowieści uczestników płynie niesamowita mądrość związana z rodzącym się społeczeństwem obywatelskim i marzeniami o wcieleniu w życie zachodnich wartości.
Gdy to czytałam nachodziła mnie smutna refleksja na temat naszego społeczeństwa. Tego, że posiadając to, o czym marzy naród Ukraiński, tak łatwo daliśmy się zmanipulować, oddaliśmy władzę w ręce osób, które odcinają nas od standardów europejskich i co najgorsze… zaczęliśmy się z tym godzić…
Do „Ukraińskiej nocy” przystąpiłam z nadzieją, że uporządkuje moją wiedzę o wydarzeniach na Majdanie, jak i jego następstwach, a w najlepszym wypadku poszerzy jeszcze moją wiedzę o niuanse z tamtego okresu. A przecież relacje uczestników tych wydarzeń z pewnością mogą dać jeszcze szerszy obraz.
Niestety, jeśli liczycie, na to co ja, mocno się rozczarujecie. Książka pozostawiła mnie z ogromnym poczuciem chaosu. Autorka faktycznie przedstawiła kilka kluczowych faktów z tamtego okresu, niezbędnych do wyciągnięcia podstawowych wniosków przyczynowo skutkowych, ale obraz rewolucji jaka dokonała się w Ukrainie był z tego prawie żaden.
Często odnosiłam wrażenie, że mimo, iż narracja (co do zasady) biegła chronologicznie, to autorka gubiła rytm. Warto tutaj zaznaczyć, że książka jest podzielona na dwie części – wydarzenia z Majdanu oraz następstwa w rejonie Donbasu. Zdarzało się, że wspomnienia należące do części pierwszej znajdowały się bez większego uzasadnienia w części drugiej. Część wspomnień (choć ciekawych) zdawała mi się w ogóle nie mieć sensu w tej konkretnej książce.
Ale przechodząc do pozytywów. Gdy odłoży się na bok oczekiwania związane z zapoznaniem się z samymi wydarzeniami i przymknie oko na chaos mamy wspaniałą książkę o dojrzałości, samoświadomości oraz odwadze Ukraińców. Z opowieści uczestników płynie niesamowita mądrość związana z rodzącym się społeczeństwem obywatelskim i marzeniami o wcieleniu w życie zachodnich wartości.
Gdy to czytałam nachodziła mnie smutna refleksja na temat naszego społeczeństwa. Tego, że posiadając to, o czym marzy naród Ukraiński, tak łatwo daliśmy się zmanipulować, oddaliśmy władzę w ręce osób, które odcinają nas od standardów europejskich i co najgorsze… zaczęliśmy się z tym godzić…
April 22, 2022
This book is more like a diary of random people who were present for many of the events that happened in Ukraine from late 2013-2014. Most of the information is completely uninteresting, and will provide zero substance to people who are already familiar with the history here. The author spends an inordinate amount of time recounting the experiences of random Jewish people who she knew or interviewed. Why on earth was something this trivial and irrelevant given so much focus? If I read a book about the War of 1812 and the author spent half the book talking about the experiences of ordinary Methodists or Presbyterians who witnessed it, I would be furious that this was included in a "history book." If you would like to learn about this event in European history, you would be much better off reading the wikipedia page. If you want a month-by-month, objective in-depth analysis, you won't get it. You will get a widely subjective, memoir that isn't even told in chronological order, with a huge dose of meaningless sentiment, "as a Jew on the Maiden," WHO CARES. As an atheist at this Chipotle, I would like to write about my experience with these burritos. As a Lutheran man using this airport bathroom, it reminded me of________.
October 7, 2023
This book started off a bit slow for me, but that is a me problem, as I am already familiar with the historical context. Then it got really, really good, as soon as it got to the stories of the people involved in the Maidan revolution and the war that followed. It shows the many complexities of Ukrainian identities and allegiances, while also taking a peek at the other side. The book feels personal and very humane. Great storytelling and interviews.
My only issue is with the audiobook. The reader has a lovely voice, but she couldn't pronounce a Slavic name correctly to save her life, which is very distracting. I wonder why they did not choose someone familiar with the languages in the book, as this is name-heavy, not just one here and there. But other than that, this is a book that will help with understanding also what is going on today and why it's all both very simple and very complicated.
My only issue is with the audiobook. The reader has a lovely voice, but she couldn't pronounce a Slavic name correctly to save her life, which is very distracting. I wonder why they did not choose someone familiar with the languages in the book, as this is name-heavy, not just one here and there. But other than that, this is a book that will help with understanding also what is going on today and why it's all both very simple and very complicated.
April 6, 2021
como alguém que tem um interesse pesado na ucrânia, levo livros como este muito a sério. é leitura beeem difícil, mas completamente inspiradora. de uma perspectiva histórica, é uma grande linha do tempo de eventos. este livro não é sobre política. é sobre estudantes ucranianos, professores, empresários, cantores, pessoas comuns que sentiram o chamado de um momento histórico único e tornaram o impossível. embora possa haver outros livros e artigos mais diretos e factuais das ocorrências durante e após o maidan em 2014, eu recomendo este livro por suas histórias íntimas e pessoais, permitindo ao leitor se sentir extremamente envolvido nos desejos desses ucranianos de construir um país do qual eles pode se orgulhar. de todos os livros que eu já li desse assunto, esse pra mim foi absolutamente o melhor.
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