Since the end of November Ukrainians have been out on the streets, protesting  against the refusal of their government to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union. In the first place, the protesters committed themselves to the European idea. However, meanwhile their voices are directed clearly against President Yanukovych and his  government. Are the increasingly violent clashes in the country to be seen as a new revolutionary movement, reclaiming the European way for Ukraine? Are they a sign of sovereignty and rejection of foreign domination in general, or a symptom of struggle between different superpowers over the territory of Ukraine? Can we see an emancipatory potential in the newly emerging movements, or are they the manifestation of a deeper conflict smouldering in the politically and linguistically divided country? This debate asks the participants as well as the audience to reflect on these and further questions, and points at the stakes of the EuroMaiden protests for Ukraine in particular and within the broader wave of social protests in the region and the world since 2008 in general.

Mariya Ivancheva (Chair & Introduction)
Tsvetan Stoyanov Fellow at the IWM with a Ph.D. degree in Sociology and Social Anthropology from the Central Eastern University, Budapest

Harald Binder
Director, Center for Urban History of Eastern Central Europe, Lviv

Tymofiy Havryliv
Writer and Publicist; Head of the Literature Department, Ivan Krypjakevyč Institute for Ukraine Studies (Lviv), Ukrainian Academy of Sciences

Christina Plank
IWM Junior Visiting Fellow; Ph.D. candidate in Political Science, University of Vienna, with a DOC-team grant from the  Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW)

Volodymyr Sklokin
IWM Visiting Fellow; Assistant Professor of History, Eastern Ukrainian Branch of the International Solomon University, Kharkiv

Philipp Ther
Professor, Institute for East European History, University of Vienna

Tatiana Zhurzhenko
Lecturer, Department of Political Science, University of Vienna

Please register via mail events@iwm.at or phone +43-1-313-58-0

Further Reading: Ukraine in Focus