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THE CONFLICT IN UKRAINE WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW

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“Maidan” is how the residents of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, usually abbreviate the name of their city’s main plaza, Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square). In recent times this name has also come to connote a space of popular protests and people power in general. “Maidan” is a Turkic word for a square, and Ukrainians likely borrowed it from the Crimean Tatars or other Turkic-speaking people. The Maidan is cen- trally located in downtown Kyiv, straddling the city’s main thoroughfare, Khreshchatyk Boulevard. There are no gov- ernment buildings in the vicinity, with the exception of City Hall, where no major political decisions are made. However, in Soviet times Khreshchatyk Boulevard served as a parade ground and the Maidan, then named after the (Bolshevik) October Revolution, as a place for political rallies. Because of this, Kyivites came to perceive it not just as the capital’s central plaza, but also as a space for political expression. The square acquired this reputation after hosting three rounds of mass political protests: in 1990, 2004–2005, and 2013–2014.
During the late Soviet period, the Maidan was dominated at its eastern end by an impressive October Revolution monument depicting Lenin leading revolutionary workers and soldiers. It was on the granite steps under this sculpture that several dozen students declared a hunger strike in October 1990, demanding the government’s resignation and other reforms. Ukraine was then a republic within the Soviet Union. The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had initiated political liberalization, which led to an increased push for democracy and national assertiveness in the union republics. In Ukraine, the party leadership remained conservative, and it took a stu- dent hunger strike in the center of the capital to remove the unpopular head of the Cabinet of Ministers. In the process, the students achieved something even more important. By set- ting up their small pup tents on the granite steps in what was subsequently dubbed the “Revolution on the Granite,” they asserted the public’s right to political protest and established the capital’s central square as a protest venue.1 The authorities did not dare to crack down on the students’ peaceful protest, which had widespread public sympathy among Kyivites. By then, the Soviet Union was on its last legs; it would be dis- solved the following year.

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Series Title

THE CONFLICT IN UKRAINE WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW

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Publisher

: Oxford University Press Inc., 2015

Collation

1-209

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

978–0–19–023727–1

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NONE

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-

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-

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-

Edition

1st Edtion

Subject(s)

Governance

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