'Every Individual Was Worth Their Weight in Gold': Euromaidan and Political Engagement in Donetsk

• In Event: (Re)Imagining Donbas: Discourses, Representations, and Memory of a Contested Region

Abstract

The 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests are most often analyzed through the lens of the events in Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv, due to their large size, violent uprisings, and changes in state-level governance that came after the protests ended. However, the city of Donetsk had an active Euromaidan protest that began on the same date at the Kyiv protest—November 21, 2013—and continued through January 2014 despite increasing violence against protesters. This paper uses interviews with displaced Euromaidan participants from the city of Donetsk who were central in organizing and sustaining the protests there to explore the role of the Ukrainian-language and pro-Ukrainian community that existed as a politically active entity in Donetsk before the Euromaidan. It considers these actors’ views of Donetsk that portray many residents as politically engaged, countering the reputation of the city’s inhabitants as baiduzhni, or apathetic. It further considers how the Donetsk protests were similar to and differed from those in Kyiv, reflecting the importance of local priorities in the development of the protest movement across Ukraine. This paper takes seriously the Euromaidan protests in Donetsk as an important precedent to the later pro-Ukrainian protests that took place in the spring of 2014 and a historical moment that changes the nature of how we understand the city of Donetsk and the Donbas region more broadly.

Author

• Emily S. Channell-Justice, Harvard U