As the global world is becoming smaller, at the same time it increasingly feels alien as citizens occupy themselves with questions of international economics, global warming, and debate cultures and religions they hardly ever encounter. In the digitally connected world, the political debate slowly loses grip on the immediate reality and everyday experience. The strikingly written book The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution by the Associate Professor of Intellectual History at Yale University Marci Shore returns to the instant and existential in politics.
The Ukrainian Night, a book about a particular place – the main city square of Ukrainian capital and the moment in history, transcends the time and place and tells a somewhat universal story about the human struggle for freedom and self-determination. For me, as a person who vaguely remembers the fights for freedom here in 1991 Lithuania, when the people were being shot and run over by tanks, the most vivid memory is of my parents’ calmness in the moment they made us, kids, put duct tape over the windows to prevent them from shattering when tanks would pass by. This image of calmness, which would remain the great mystery to me for years reoccurs in the book, as time and again people recall being calm whenever they were in the center of events on Maidan. It’s watching television what made them nervous. “We felt safe only on the Maidan,” recall Taras Ratushnyy and his son Roman.
The revolution felt like a rupture in time, breaking the routine of apathy, alienation and general reconciliation with the rule of oligarchs. After Maidan, Misha, having endured fights, bullets shot at him and too much blood for a lifetime, let alone one day, has headaches, nightmares, fear of falling asleep or being alone.
“For months he dreamt about the blockade, about the policemen with their guns pointed at him. Had he not been there, he would not have had these problems, but he would have had others: he would have had the guilt to deal with for the rest of his life.”This overcoming of the self, the estrangement of the modern individuals living in the comfortable confines of their own privacy became the power in number, when individual choice added to the choices of all the others pouring into the square from around the country as well as spilling over from Maidan into other town squares.
People began experiencing the time in a different way. It now was moved by the events on the square. Finally, as the atmosphere escalated fast after 16 January 2014 (when President Victor Yanukovych forced the passage of law revoking the rights of free speech and assembly, as a result pushing the peaceful protesters at Maidan beyond the law), people started losing track of time. No one would go to bed anymore, fearing the unknown reality they may wake up to the next morning. While the citizens in Western countries continue to pick and choose what truths to believe and what lies to tell, on Maidan the people held to the reality unfolding right in from of their eyes.The revolution became a moment when the whole worlds could witness how the people on the edges of Europe defy postmodernity
The revolution became a theological moment that we associate with a reckoning – something that makes things vivid in the world where we lack clarity and certainty. As Shore rightly notes, the revolution became a moment when the whole worlds could witness how the people on the edges of Europe defy postmodernity. As a consequence, we want to look at the experience of our neighbors not only as something heroic. We are also tempted to search for an opportunity to disrupt the routine of time we live in: to force people out of their comfort zone, out of the confounds of privacy and into the public. Authoritarian and nationalistic political forces across Europe and beyond reinforce the image of sacrifice, calling for a need to challenge status quo (with complete disregard for the rule of law or democratic process), invite people on the quest for authenticity and unity. They tap into the longing to strip the politics down off of all words and debates and get back to the politics of immediate experience by building up the conflict between the nation and Europe, between “us” and “the foreign.”The revolution felt like a rupture in time, breaking the routine of apathy, alienation and general reconciliation with the rule of oligarchs
“The complete absence of the rule of law meant that everyone was vulnerable, that no one had any protection from the government at all,” says Taras Dobko contemplating the adoption of the 16 January law, that provided to be the last drop for many of the protesters.
And this is the biggest paradox and the tragedy of politics. Thanks to the rule of law and well-functioning institutions that accommodate the needs of people, we risk becoming disconnected from each other and the public domain.
This book review is written by Simona Merkinaite, a PhD candidate at Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University, freelance consultant in the field of human rights, columnist.
