For generations raised on the promise of freedom of 1991, the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv in the winter 2013-2014 were a sudden, electrifying chance to make that promise real. But what happens when hope collides with the complicated realities of politics, society, economy, and the competing against notions of history?
Drawing on intellectual discourses from 2013 onwards, this book maps those collisions, reconstructing Ukraine’s “noumenal parliament” — the constellation of voices that have vied to define the nation’s future. Bogdan Kolesnyk explains why Ukraine’s is not a single story but a composite of many, why neither liberal consolidation nor national stories alone provide a sufficient answer, and suggests how justice, reason and republican institutions might be the anchors for plural polity to endure.
In attempting to understand Ukrainian socio-political reality on its own terms from beyond its borders, this book urgently enquires what kind of future is worth fighting for?