Civil Society In Post Euromaidan Ukraine

This book is among the first comprehensive efforts to collectively and academically investigate the legacy of the Euromaidan in conflict-torn Ukraine within the domain of civil society broadly understood. The contributions to this book identify, describe, conceptualize, and explain various developments in Ukrainian civil society and its role in Ukraine's democratization, state-building, and conflict resolution by looking at specific understudied sectors and by tracing the situation before, during, and after the Euromaidan. In doing so, this trailblazing collection highlights a number of new themes, challenges, and opportunities related to Ukrainian civil society. They include volunteerism, grassroots community-based activism, social activism of churches, civic efforts of building peace and reconciliation, civic activism of journalists and digital activism, activism of think tanks, diaspora networks and the LGBT movement, challenges of civil society relations with the state, uncivil society, and the closing of civic space.--Oleh Havrylyshyn, Carleton University

Ukraine has been shaken by both sociopolitical disorders and a deep humanitarian emergency. Sophie Falsini explores the way and the extent to which events since late 2013 - the Euromaidan revolution, the annexation of Crimea, and the war in the East - have transformed civil society, looking at organizations active in providing help to internally displaced people to show how Ukraine's 'civil society 2.0' saw the rise of grassroots and voluntary movements that triggered social mobilization.

The large-scale mobilisation of Ukrainian society is the most farreaching legacy of Euromaidan and its tragic aftermath. Civil society intervened to fill the gap created by the state's failure to fulfil key functions like the provision of security and defence. In so doing, civil society has turned de facto into a security actor. By proposing a narrative of collective responsibility and introducing modern and more transparent working methods in civilian and military institutions, post-Maidan civil society has displayed the potential to act as a "change agent" determined to induce substantial reforms in Ukraine. The condition for this to happen is that state institutions establish and retain arenas for functional representation and guarantee civil society's regular and meaningful access to decision-making beyond the emergency of the current crisis.

The fact that the politicians brought to power by the Ukrainian Maidan revolutions turned out to be clearly anti-democratic, fully reliant on advantages of the moment stolen from opponents on the square, and not ready to compromise or stick to agreements made with opponents, is both the fault and a generic trait of the Maidan revolutions. It is this fact that eventually became the key factor in the collapse of the Ukrainian state. Indeed, if we imagine that the February 21 agreements between the opposition and Yanukovich had been implemented, there would not have been the referendum in Crimea, nor the Odessa massacre, nor the referendum in the Donbass, nor the bloody civil war, and most likely somebody other than Yanukovich would have become President of Ukraine. However, given the logic of ochlocracy, it is just as clear that this was impossible. For the leaders of opposition are through and through square-dwelling provocateurs, pushed from behind by a similar, though far more radical, breed. While elections tend to have a low turnout, with the procedures usually well defined, the turnout at referendums tends to be high, although there are often procedural questions. These are the realities one has to learn to evaluate correctly. The institution of representative democracy attracts less and less the attention of the citizens of different countries. If there is still some interest in elections for the head of state (although fatigue builds up because all politicians are the same), people rarely understand who to vote for and why, when it comes to parliamentary elections. The shows put on, or the intensified controversies between politicians before elections, only show that national leadership does everything possible to attract people's attention to a voting procedure that has become uninteresting or meaningless for them. On the other hand, the instruments of direct democracy, such as referendums that decide truly life-changing questions for a country or a region, draw more and more people. The answer to the question of why this is happening is obvious - people show their civic-mindedness when something is vital, when their voice defines the fate of their country, but they do not want to take part in meaningless games imposed on them. On the other hand, this suggests the more profound conclusion that the public conscience, the proverbial civil society is a real, sizeable phenomenon, rather than a "Frondesque" narrow circle of party activists. And the position of the true civil society, i.e. people who perceive themselves as citizens of their country who care about its future, has long since outgrown the meaningless formalism of liberal democracy.

The papers presented in this volume analyze the civil uprising known as Euromaidan that began in central Kyiv in late November 2013, when the Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych opted not to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union, and continued over the following months. The topics include the motivations and expectations of protesters, organized crime, nationalism, gender issues, mass media, the Russian language, and the impact of Euromaidan on Ukrainian politics as well as on the EU, Russia, and Belarus. An epilogue to the book looks at the aftermath, including the Russian annexation of Crimea and the creation of breakaway republics in the east, leading to full-scale conflict. The goal of the book is less to offer a definitive account than one that represents a variety of aspects of a mass movement that captivated world attention and led to the downfall of the Yanukovych presidency.

Volume One of Three Revolutions presents the overall research and discussions on topics related to the revolutionary events that have unfolded in Ukraine since 1990. The three revolutions referred to in this project include: the Revolution on Granite (1990); the Orange Revolution (2004–2005); and the Euromaidan Revolution (2013–2014). The project’s overall goal was to determine the extent to which we have the right to use the term “revolution” in relation to these events. Moreover, the research also uncovered the methodological problems associated with this task. Lastly, the project investigated to what extent the three revolutions are connected to each other and to what extent they are detached. Hence, the research in this volume not only discusses the theoretical aspects but also provides new analyses on such issues as religion, memory, and identity in Ukraine.

The Nonprofit Sector in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia uniquely provides a timely overview of research on the nonprofit sector and nonprofit organizations in eleven former Soviet republics, with each central chapter written by local experts.

This edited collection provides a comprehensive overview of the major changes and transformations in Ukrainian society, from its independence in 1991, through to 2018. Based on solid empirical quantitative data generated by local institutions such as the monitoring survey Ukrainian Society, produced by the Institute of Sociology of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (IS NASU), the contributions explore transitions in values, occupational structure, education, inequality, religiosity, media, and identity, as well as the impact of the “Revolution of Dignity” (Euromaidan) and the Donbas conflict. Covering more than 25 years of Ukrainian history and complemented by qualitative research carried out by authors, Ukraine in Transformation will be invaluable to upper level students and researchers of sociology, political science, international relations and cultural studies, with a particular interest in post-Soviet Eastern Europe.