EuroMaidan in Ukraine: Its Meaning and After-Effects

This presentation raises a number of questions:  Was EuroMaidan the repetition of a well-known scenario or a truly innovative Event? Does it prove that Ukraine is ‘essentially European’ and, more decisively, can it revive the idea of Europe and ‘Europeanness’ for the Europeans themselves? Was it a truly unprecedented experience for all participants but poorly articulated for the external audience? Has the spirit of EuroMaidan disappeared in contemporary Ukraine – and must we identify the armed conflict that it triggered as a devalorization of the Event? The key question, however, for all Ukrainians at home and abroad has become whether the core of the EuroMaidan experience may become the point of departure towards of renewed Ukrainian state?

Valeria Korablyova is an Associate Professor at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Ukraine) and a Carnegie Visiting Research Fellow at Stanford in Fall-Winter 2014-2015. She has recently worked on the concept of ‘ideology’ within its broader social and cultural context. In 2013-2014 she conducted a research project on ideological discourses in post-Soviet Belarus and Ukraine (the European Humanities University, Carnegie Corporation grant). Her new book Соціальні смисли ідеології (Social Senses of Ideology, Kyiv University Press, to forthcoming) focuses on phenomena of ideology in modern Europe and in the contemporary global world, based on its representations in politics, economy and culture; whereas her current research at Stanford deals with the ideological situation and social space in present-day Ukraine.