Symbols of Maidan

This article was written in 2018 to mark the five-year anniversary of the start of the Revolution of Dignity. It all started on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square in Kyiv) on 21 November 2013 with student protests against pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych and his decision to adopt a Russia-oriented policy. Ten years have now passed, and we are calling to mind the various symbols of the Maidan.

It's hard to believe, but it's true: ten years have passed since the beginning of the EuroMaidan.

When you think about it, you come up against a certain paradox of timing. Strangely, your mind envelops all the memories of that cold autumn and hot winter.

On the one hand, the Revolution of Dignity seems very far away.

In these seemingly endless ten years, there have been so many events, so many new kinds of fear and pain have emerged, that the events of the EuroMaidan seem to be something very distant.

Sometimes we may even think that all this did not happen to us, or if it did, it was definitely not during this lifetime.

But on the other hand, the Revolution of Dignity also seems very close.

If you don't think of it in terms of years, then it was, if not yesterday, then at most the day before yesterday. Sometimes it seems as if your clothes still bore the omnipresent smell of fire burning in a metal barrel cut in half.

You will now go down Mala Zhytomyrska Street to the Maidan Square, and a teeming, bustling scene will appear before your eyes: the towering Christmas tree to the right of the Independence Monument, a barricade on Instytutska Street, a moving barrier of orange helmets in front of it, entire blocks of tents, a sea of flags, the low hum of the crowd and the high, piercing notes of the song Plyve Kacha [A Duckling Swims, a Ukrainian folk song - ed.].

In a word, after all this time, you were never really able to get rid of the sense that nothing has ended.

You were just distracted, going about your business, but you're about to come back to the protest, to return to the ranks, to the Maidan. And that’s how it has been for ten years now.

With each new anniversary, this paradox of time becomes more and more intense. Reality and memories become distant flashes, scattered pictures and individual symbols torn from the blurred background of the era.

Every day, their specific historical significance is being wiped away. Increasingly, they turn from events into painful emotional blots. We are trying to hide those versions of ourselves that were there, burying them deeper and deeper under a layer of irony, sarcasm, anger and feigned indifference.

It could not be otherwise. This is how the mechanisms of human memory work, turning real events into a string of vivid memories, generalisations and symbols. And the Euromaidan provided more than enough of them.

On the eve of the tenth anniversary, Ukrainska Pravda decided to call to mind the most vivid places, objects and slogans that were destined to become a symbolic map and chronology of the Revolution of Dignity.

National anthem

Many things happened for the first time on the Maidan. But the main role was occupied not by streaming videos or Facebook groups, but by things that our people had apparently lost long ago and seemingly forever. The ability to stand up for yourself, the ability to trust one another and to help someone who trusts you. Literally before everyone’s eyes, Ukrainians remembered these qualities that had long been lost in the indifferent routine of survival.

This rebirth was most obvious in the way the Ukrainian national anthem ceased to be an empty formality and became something that could actually unite hundreds of thousands of people. The song, which had previously been sung only by football fans, was constantly on people's lips since the beginning of the Maidan protests.

The anthem was heard everywhere and all the time: people on the metro escalators chanted lines from it, passengers in metro carriages suddenly burst out singing it, groups of young people in small narrow streets around the Maidan and in districts far from the centre sang it, heroes were greeted with it and sent off with it…

The Independence Monument and the Christmas tree

The Independence Monument became not just a witness, but actually a participant in the major turning points of the Revolution of Dignity: peaceful protests gathered under it, students were beaten near it, barricades stopped the assaults of the Berkut (riot police) under it, and heroes stopped bullets fired into the crowd under it as well.

Ukraine was with its people, both symbolically and literally.

There was also a place for symbolic opposition at this point. Next to the column stood the Christmas tree, which they mockingly referred to by its Russian name, Yolka, which also became a symbol. Only it symbolised something completely different from what one would expect: [putting up the tree was used by the authorities as the pretext for scattering the protesters, and hence came to symbolise] the anger and cruelty that the authorities are capable of, and finally, the collapse and powerlessness of those who are at war with their own people.

St Michael's Cathedral

The Maidan Revolution revived the symbolic meaning not only of the anthem, but also reminded people of the true role of the church. A place of protection and refuge. A place where you can help and where you will be helped.

One of the faces of the Maidan was Father Ivan (Sydor), who rang the bells of St Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery, as in the Middle Ages, trying to wake up Kyiv on the night when the authorities ordered that the protesters, many of them students, be beaten up.

In fact, after that night, the monastery had its place on the map of protests for a long time: first as a place of protection for protesters, and later as one of the largest medical stations on the Maidan. In fact, in their time of need, the people and the church truly remembered each other again.

Bulldozer on Bankova Street

If one could think of a place that served as a contrast to the open Maidan during the Revolution, it would have to be the Presidential Administration.

It was Bankova Street that became a "black spot", a metaphorical and literal place of concentration of the forces of the government of the day.

Somewhat symbolically, it was on this street that Petro Poroshenko began his rise to power.

On 1 December 2013, a few hours before the bloody massacre by the Berkut police, it was Poroshenko who, famously using a bulldozer, tried to calm down the hot-headed patriots and obviously sent sham protesters in balaclavas.

Poroshenko did not succeed in pacifying the crowd, but he would later come back to Bankova Street as a rightful occupant [as President – ed.].

Hrushevskoho Street

"The Baptism on Hrushevskoho" needs no explanation for anyone who was on the Maidan. In the beginning, most of the protesters perceived the Euromaidan as a means of protection, of defending their dreams of Europe.

This vision of the Maidan prevailed for a very long time. Until 19 January 2014, when the people's protest showed that this movement would not remain only or mainly defensive, but would also go on the offensive [on both sides – ed.]. It was the events on Hrushevskoho Street that marked the point of no return.

Molotov cocktails, water cannon, pump-action rifles, a protective smoke and fire barrier made of tyres, the first Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred [in Ukrainian, the Nebesna Sotnia (Heavenly Hundred) refers to the slain protesters of the Maidan – ed.]: all of this first happened as part of the protest precisely on Hrushevskoho Street.

Tents

The Maidan is not just geography. It is, first and foremost, a living and moving ecosystem of cooperation.

The main unit, the basic building block of this system, was a tent. It was the most important element in every sense.

The appearance of the tent is important as a symbolic beginning of the Maidan. As soon as a tent camp appeared in the country’s central square, it meant that protest was no longer something optional.

At the same time, the tent is a multifunctional module, and as such was the practical foundation of the Maidan. People live and warm themselves in a tent, hide from enemies and find friends in a tent; a tent can serve as a medical centre, an operating room, a church, a restaurant, a meeting room and a theatre.

A tent is the Maidan.

A fire barrel

Another thing without which you cannot understand the Maidan is a fire barrel. Or rather, the conversations around it.

If one has to find the point at which the protest turned from something mundane and routine into something in the realm of ideas and ideals, into a Revolution with a capital R, it was definitely the nightly conversations around the burning fires.

Just as the logs thrown into the barrel kept the fire going, so these nightly conversations by thousands of fires kept the Maidan itself alive.

Barricade

There was a popular phrase during the Revolution: "There is no place safer than the Maidan".

This saying is, of course, paradoxical. How can a place which was constantly under assault from security forces, and where people were constantly dying, be considered safe?

Like any paradox, this was true. It was in Maidan Square, among like-minded people who were also a bit scared but determined, that you could breathe a sigh of relief and stop worrying.

Once you are at the barricades, all metaphysical, abstract fear is almost magically left behind.

It is unclear how, but these low snow banks around the camp with just a few actual guards were able to become something symbolic akin to the Great Wall in Game of Thrones, an insurmountable wall which the enemy cannot destroy or scale.

Cobblestone. Tyres. Shields

Even though there was a metaphysical sense of calm in the Maidan, the situation with the physical sense of safety was much more complicated.

For a long time, the leaders of and participants in the Revolution of Dignity thought that it would be carried out in the same way as the Orange Revolution [in Ukrainian ‘Pomarancheva Revoliutsiia’, a series of protests and political events that took place in Ukraine after the run-off vote of 2004 Ukrainian presidential election – ed.] with peaceful protests and slight clashes in an almost festive atmosphere.

Even though, after 30 November 2013, when students were beaten up it was clear that the future would be different from the past, the leaders of the protests continued to follow the example of 2004.

But what made this Maidan different from the previous one were two parallel processes happening at the same time. The first was prepared by the so-called leaders who went to meet with then-President Viktor Yanukovych, the second was forming at the grassroots level.

And it was the second process that was really driving the protests.

It was thanks to the grassroot movement that the real Self-Defence [in Ukrainian, Samooborona, a civil movement – ed.] was formed. The protesters were armed with cobblestones and Molotov cocktails, and created a protective ring of fire using tyres.

People were in danger and were looking for ways to protect themselves. At times, the miners’ helmets or hastily carved wooden shields looked hilarious.

But when people carrying these shields and wearing these helmets went straight into the hail of bullets "for their fellows", then the smiles disappeared and gave way to pain, rage and self-sacrifice.

Berkut

Most things on the Maidan were ambiguous.

Nobody knew for sure what this or that step would lead to, what it was better to do, who to listen to, what to think.

But there was one thing which united everyone – "Berkut" [the Ukrainian special police force – ed.].

A seemingly ordinary security unit became the symbol of the evil the Maidan had risen up against in the first place.

On the night the protesters were beaten up, excuses for the use of "excessive force" were still being made, as some claimed it had been caused by a misunderstanding between those who gave the orders and those who executed them.  

But day after day, with one use of force by the Berkut after another, it was becoming increasingly obvious that there was no difference between the "commanders" and those following the orders.

And if there was anything that did not deserve to exist, it was both that unit and the regime it protected.

 "I am a drop in the ocean"

It is hard to compare the Revolution of Dignity to any other public demonstrations. If we dig deeper, we will see that it was not solely a political protest. It was much more than that..

Any protest is a form of destruction, dismantling the state of affairs that people do not agree with. The Maidan, however, was a form of creation. It was an area of creative excitement that was contagious for all who set foot in it, infecting them with the virus of change.

Revolution was in this case not so much a matter of destroying the old order, as offering a new one.

This new order was captured in the most precise, complete and generalised way by the author of the motto "I am a drop in the ocean".

Everyone was a part of something great, everyone had their own place. Because "Razom-Syla" ("Together We Are Strong"), because "Ukraine is Europe", because "Poimite, Nas Zadolbalo" ("Understand, We Are Fed Up"), and so "The Country is under Repair".

But without each person in the crowd, without this little droplet, a big ocean could have never welled up.

Open university and street piano

The creative and intellectual inspiration behind the Maidan found expression in two similar but at the same time completely different phenomena.

The first was the Opening of the Maidan University. This became a form of intellectual communication and shared opinions. It was an attempt to give a systematic answer to the wider question about the present and the future of the country, an attempt to unite the creative aspirations of many and use it to make a difference.

By contrast, there was the phenomenon of the creative spirit of the Maidan, just as prominent as the first – a street piano.

At the time of the most acute clashes, something suddenly appeared at the hot spots. Always in the hands of some anonymous talent, always involved in the protest.

In fact, this travelling piano has become a symbol of a wild, unbridled creative act. It marked a breakthrough of something pure - absolute beauty that was able to appear in times of danger and look it straight in the eye.

The best photos of Euromaidan times

From "Warriors of Light" to "A Duckling Swims…"

Danger was indeed everywhere. No matter where you were – in Maidan Square, in front of the Verkhovna Rada [the Ukrainian Parliament – ed.], on the barricades or in some distant square – you never felt complete safety.

Something would give you away. Inevitably. Either a blue-and-yellow ribbon, or the smell of the fire, or the Warriors of Light playing in your headphones. Especially that particular song.

That song possessed some kind of magic and changed something in people. Your gaze seemed to become as throbbing as the melody, your fists involuntarily clenched, your posture straightened.  

People could not just sit at home, hide behind "I don’t want to", "there’s no use trying", "why do it?" The warriors of light hide neither from batons nor from bullets.

So it will be, until the duckling swims over the fire and smoke, over the crowd and the Maidan, over "the waterfall of youth in the swift-flowing river"...

To the land of tranquillity and eternal youth, to the land of no return, to where the Hundred of the best, ‘Heavenly’ indeed, marched steadily in an even formation.

Supporting each other, laughing and joking, remembering us… Because we died with each one of them. Because they go on living with each one of us…

Roman Romaniuk, Ukrainska Pravda

Illustrations: Anastasiia Babash 

Translation: Myroslava Zavadska and Polina Kyryllova 

Editing: Monica Sandor