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Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine

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Handbook of Revolutions in the 21st Century

Part of the book series: Societies and Political Orders in Transition ((SOCPOT))

Abstract

This chapter presents a case-study of the Ukrainian revolution called Euromaidan, or Revolution of Dignity, and is devoted to the analysis of the main preconditions and causes that led to this revolution. Author also attempts to reveal some mechanisms of these processes to delineate what happened in late 2013 and early 2014 in Ukraine. Shevsky points out that the principal factors that made Euromaidan possible are identified as follows: a deep regional cleavage expressed linguistically, culturally and economically; ineffective public budget management that weakened the state and caused mass discontent; and polarization of the political system manifested in a rivalry between two groups of influence. The basic cause of both mass mobilization and anger among the elites was President Yanukovich’s authoritarian governance, following the disappointingly ineffective Yushchenko regime after the pro-democratic Orange Revolution of 2004, and Yanukovich’s election in 2010. The trigger for the rebellion was the reaction against Yanukovich’s suddenly postponed signing of an agreement for European association. Yanukovich’s ousting caused political destabilization of the Ukrainian state and changed it dramatically. Shevsky concludes that in many respects, Ukraine may be said to have experienced a state breakdown.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A similarly close voting was also observed in the second round of the presidential election on December 26, 2004 (49% for Yanukovych versus 47% for Yushchenko).

  2. 2.

    It appears appropriate to mention that the split of the Ukrainian territory into two parts and the influence of this split on the aggravation of the Ukrainian political life somehow resembles Kyrgyzstan also divided into two parts—the South and the North (about this peculiarity of the Kyrgyz society see Chapter “Revolutions in Kyrgyzstan” [Ivanov, 2022, in this volume]). As a result, both Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan found themselves in a kind of revolutionary trap. About the falling of some countries in revolutionary traps see Chapter “Conclusion. Why Have So Many Revolutions Occurred in Recent Years, and Are They Likely to Continue to Occur in the Future?” (Goldstone, Grinin, & Korotayev, 2022a), Chapter “Revolutions, Counterrevolutions, and Democracy” (Grinin & Korotayev, 2022a), and Chapter “Revolutions of the 21st Century as a Factor in the World System Reconfiguration” (Grinin, 2022d), in this volume.—Editors’ note.

  3. 3.

    Such an excessive role of oligarchs in political life marks Ukraine out among all post-Soviet countries.

  4. 4.

    See Chapter “The Arab Spring: Causes, Conditions, and Driving Forces” (Grinin & Korotayev, 2022b) and Chapter “The Arab Spring. A Quantitative Analysis” (Korotayev et al., 2022) in this book.

  5. 5.

    See Chapter “The Bulldozer Revolution in Serbia” (Khodunov, 2022a), Chapter “The Rose Revolution in Georgia” (Khodunov, 2022c), and Chapter “The ‘Color’ Revolutions. Successes and Limitations of Non-violent Protest” (Mitchell, 2022, in this volume). However, we note that the role of youth in the Euromaidan revolution was lower than in the revolutionary wave of 2000–2009, but in Ukraine, cohorts of more aged people (from 30 to 40 years old) were active, see more about this further. Also, unlike the color revolutions, the Euromaidan protest can hardly be called peaceful.

  6. 6.

    On the growing importance of revolutions as a geopolitical weapon see Chapter “On Revolutionary Situations, Stages of Revolution, and Some Other Aspects of the Theory of Revolution” (Grinin, 2022a), Chapter “Revolutions and Historical Process” (Grinin, 2022b), and Chapter “On Theories and Phenomenon of Revolution” (Goldstone, Grinin, & Korotayev, 2022c, in this volume).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. HSE University, Moscow, Russia

    Dmitry Shevsky

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  1. Dmitry Shevsky
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Scholar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Arlington, VA, USA

    Jack A. Goldstone

  2. National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia

    Leonid Grinin

  3. National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia

    Andrey Korotayev

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Shevsky, D. (2022). Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine. In: Goldstone, J.A., Grinin, L., Korotayev, A. (eds) Handbook of Revolutions in the 21st Century. Societies and Political Orders in Transition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86468-2_32

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