Dates: November 20-21, 2024
Оnline / offline
The Focus Forum: “The Evolution of Protest Movements in Modern Ukraine: Empires, Wars, Identity”
The history of Ukraine is marked by a long and complex struggle for national identity, sovereignty, independence, and democratic values. The Ukrainian lands located on the frontier between the West and Russia used to be part of the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires. However, being at the crossroads of different civilizations and cultures, Ukrainians have managed to preserve their cultural identity, territory, historical memory, language, and national consciousness.
The ability to unite and self-organize in various ways - from face-to-face meetings to popular assemblies, from spontaneous associations to public and volunteer initiatives - played a crucial role in preserving the Ukrainian identity. As subjects of historical processes, Ukrainian civic unions and organizations were able not only to resist external threats and imperial ambitions but also to influence socio-political processes and defend the interests of the Ukrainian people as part of other state formations. Mass protest actions, such as various forms of “people's governance,” civic activism, disobedience, resistance, and uprisings initiated and institutionalized by active citizens were important levers of influence on the agenda of state formations in modern Ukraine.
Under the influence of progressive ideas and historical events in Europe, in particular the French Revolution, in the mid-19th century the Ukrainians began to actively defend their political and cultural rights. They formed societies, communities, and brotherhoods (e.g., the Brotherhood of Cyril and Methodius, the Brotherhood of Tarasivtsi, Supreme Ruthenian Council), they created and developed political formations seeking the ways and means to defend Ukrainians’ national interests with the support of common population. This influenced the formation of horizontal ties, which made it possible to build a wide network of active participants and supporters of the protests, to form a non-hierarchical structure that had an impact on achieving the goals and objectives.
Despite numerous challenges the Ukrainians had to face to restore their country's independence, including military conflicts, economic instability, and political contradictions, they continued to fight for freedom. This struggle, using various forms of resistance, has been going on in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
It was the Maidans that became the quintessence of developing the protest movement in Ukraine. Between the late 20th and early 21st centuries, various types of protests were combined, however, with a clear dominance of non-violent resistance. The Maidans emerged as a specific form of protest movement that was able to synthesize and accumulate different forms, as well as an instrument of direct democracy based on the historical and cultural traditions of the past, e. g., armed uprisings during the first and second waves of the 20th century. Ukrainian liberation movement (Kholodnyi Yar insurgents, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)), political manifestos of the 1960s dissidents, mass protests of the 2nd half of the 1980s initiated by Ukrainian “non-formal” organizations, etc. Prominent examples of protest movements are the Revolution on Granite, the “Ukraine without Kuchma” action, the Orange Revolution, the Tax and Language Maidans.
In the new historical context, the essential features of modern protest movements are the defense of basic democratic values (human rights, community rights, etc.), rather than socio-economic and political demands, and a focus on the values of dignity and freedom. A vivid confirmation of this was the Euromaidan/Revolution of Dignity, which influenced the worldview and civilizational guidelines of a wide range of Ukrainian society. It became a unique phenomenon in the context of Ukrainian state-building, an example to be admired and emulated in the world.
What was the role of diverse protests in Ukraine's struggle for independence? When does protest become the marker of a mature civil society? What forms of protest have been successful under occupation in different historical periods and why? Can peaceful protests be effective during the current Russian-Ukrainian war? What protest actions in the recent history of Ukraine, apart from the well-known ones, can be included in the narrative of the Maidan phenomenon?
These and other questions will be discussed at the VI Academic Forum dedicated to the significance of protest actions in the modern history of Ukraine and their impact on the Ukrainians’ civilizational visions.
Thematic areas of the Academic Forum:
- Protest movements as a factor of nation-building. Experience of Europe and Ukraine
- Evolution of national resistance: from the mid- 19th century to the Russian-Ukrainian war
- Protests: the idea, types and (im)permanence
- Self-organization of society: ways, methods, formations
- Maidans: protoforms, forms, social construct
- The phenomenon of Maidans as the highest form of civil protest
- “Cultural trauma” in the context of mass protests, wars and occupation
- Remembering and forgetting: (re)presentation of resistance
Historians, political scientists, sociologists, philosophers, lawyers, museum workers, cultural experts, communication specialists, and scientists of other social & humanitarian disciplines who research the protest movements and the Maidan phenomenon, especially in the context of national liberation struggle of the Ukrainians for their statehood, and all those interested in Forum`s topic are invited to participate.
For more information: +38 067-793-64-75, naukforum2020@gmail.com
https://forms.gle/7UWu1wjHGibpgbpE7
Partners: Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukrainian Catholic University.