SUMMARY:

Andriy Portnov identifies several main characteristics of Euromaidan that had predetermined the main venues of subsequent political developments and also signified potentially productive research agendas. He starts by registering the structural failure of the state as the main reason for Euromaidan and the main challenge to which the Ukrainian society had to respond. His second theme is the ambivalent role of social elevators launched by Maidan: on the one hand, they catapulted new people to prominent positions, while on the other, they helped to integrate old institutions into the new society by “Maidanizing” them with new faces. Portnov then shows how the familiar trope of fixed ethnopolitical identities with clear territorial localization has been compromised by post-Maidan developments, to the utter confusion of Russian strategists and many Ukrainian (and European) intellectuals. Historical parallels have been another discursive strategy exploited by all sides of the Ukrainian conflict to strengthen their case or discredit opponents. By itself, no historical precedence (and no familiar tropes such as “civil war” or “ethnic conflict”) can fully explain and express the new and truly unprecedented phenomenon of post-Maidan Ukraine. This brings Portnov to his final point, about the significance for Ukraine of finding its own distinctive subjectivity. He believes that this subjectivity should embrace the fundamental hybridity of Ukraine as a country speaking two main languages (without clear territorial demarcation), practicing three Christian denominations of the Eastern ritual, and combining several coexisting historical memories.