Epilogue

In the months just prior to this book going to press, on 24 November 2013, exactly nine years after the Orange Revolution, a new moment of mass mobilization stunned observers of Ukrainian democratization. The first calls to protests by activists and journalists began on 21 November, following President Yanukovych’s government’s announcement that he will not go ahead with signing the Trade Association Agreement with the European Union, an agreement that was planned and negotiated over several years. Yet, it was not until Sunday, 24 November, when the political opposition coordinated a march throughout Kyiv, that approximately 500,000 citizens across the country joined in protests, with approximately 300,000 in the capital alone. Protests quickly spread to regional city centres, and while larger protests were organized in the centre and west of the country, smaller protest events were reported in Crimea, Donets’k, Kharkiv, Odesa and Sumy. In the days that followed, the protests seemed to lose their steam (only 2000–3000 individuals were actively taking part throughout the following week). Yet, after a brutally violent attack by Berkut (riot police) on peaceful protesters (mostly students and journalists) in the early hours of 30 November, the protests exploded to approximately 800,000–1,000,000 participants by the next Sunday, 1 December. Simply put ‘ordinary’ Ukrainians were at it again; this time they called their protests EuroMaidan (European Square). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Democracy · Democratization · Economic history · Opposition (politics) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Supporter · Ukrainian · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · History · Law