The year of two Maidans

The year in which all the news was only about Ukraine began with thousands of people who went to Independence Square in Kyiv on November 21, 2013 after the then Ukrainian Government of Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov announced the termination of the preparation of the agreement with the European Union of the Association. The next day, his Maidan gathered in Lviv. A local university teacher later recalled that he was going to sleep that evening. But then his students called. "I had to go ..."

A revolution began with the Kyiv Maidan. The fact that the Maidanov in Kyiv was two are already remembered by few. And in vain. Therefore, in Ukraine there are always two Maidanov. And until November 21, 2013, and after.

And a year ago, these two Maidans did not even hide that they did not like each other and they have little in common. Even the music was different. Ukrainian opposition politicians and other respectable pro -European public, gathered on European square, filled the vocals of invited groups, mostly not too famous and therefore decided not to miss a democratic chance of promotions and some earnings. A few hundred meters in Khreshchatyk, on Independence Square, or, in fact, on the Maidan, they were heated fervently, but for the most part under the “plywood” - there was no resource on the invited musicians. They gathered, as they were called, “social activists” - students, teenagers, lost romantics with guitars and backpacks, flowing out from all over Ukraine, although there were people with serious trade union faces. The European Square for the night calmed down in a European man, on the Maidan protest continued non-stop. There were everyone who did not disperse the strength-except for politicians whom no one invited here, and it was somehow even logical that the Maidan was here and politicians-there. And when the energy of protest in two squares was already missing and politicians themselves asked for students, the latter were still thinking, but the frost took his own: there were fewer people. The Maidan united again, and for a while, as a ten years before, in the "orange" revolution, again everyone decided that the Maidan in Ukraine was alone.

There are two of them, simply not always visible the border separating them. There were two more years ago, on “orange” days, when, meeting with ovations every word of the friends of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko already then, enthusiastic townspeople and guests of the Ukrainian capital were stipulated: yes we know all about Julia and her fraud-but something must be changed! The Maidan of those who, having filled out a huge square, believed that everything could be changed, even then existed separately from the Maidan of those who stood on the rostrum and only wanted to change power. There were two of them and then, when the revolution dried up, when the orange quickly went out of fashion, and his other heroes even began to be a little ashamed of his involvement in the then orange and frosty Maidan - how serious people of their stupid and naive childishness were ashamed.

The Maidan of the Changes and the Maidan of the Power-this in Ukrainian is a life-loving struggle of opposites sometimes enters the unprecedented unity, then again to disperse again with disgust, and this circle began again a year ago. The lifetime of the generation is now calculated in Ukraine with an accuracy until the day: a year ago, the Maidan gathered on the almost ninth anniversary of the “orange” revolution. Those who went to their romantic Maidan now, as if they had studied the mistakes and sins of the parents who agreed to give victory alone - only in order to leave others. They studied, but still accepted into their area of ​​not very called leaders, those who arranged their own Maidan only because they were short-lived-idealists, and because they had to prepare for the elections, and none of the leaders thought about the revolution. This Maidan of political ambitions in its uncomplicated, delivered from selfless and frantic teenager version was inexpressibly formed and seemed to not hide that it was looking for only a reason to disperse, turning a mass action into one of the pages of the written election campaign. And nothing more, because there was nothing special in the first days to talk from the stands, except for European integration, but everything has already been said about it, first of all, frozen students who have already learned to feel like Europe.

A few days after the merger of the Maidanov, Yanukovych went to Vilnius, to the very decisive summit of the eastern partnership, and returned without signing anything, and the political meaning of the protest completely disappeared. The page, it would seem, was turned upside down, there was no need to protest more, winter came. Lovers, having received their own from the Maidan, calmly dispersed to prepare for the elections further. On the frosty Maidan, without a clear goal and out of the last stubbornness, tireless youth remained, equally, why, on the one hand, to remain if everyone had already dispersed, and, on the other hand, how easily it was possible to disperse so easily after they gathered so inspired 10 years later.

It was them, who, who spent the last night on the Maidan, dispersed with incomprehensible cruelty and equally incomprehensible goal the “Berkutovites”, and, it turns out, it was with them that the year began, in which all the news only about Ukraine. Other people came to the Maidan, taking revenge for them, and again no one noticed that Maidanov, as in all other Ukrainian, was two. On the Maidan they began to smile less and talk about Europe. Here, the answer to the question was no longer obvious here, which is more important, to achieve European integration or overthrow Yanukovych. "Of course, European integration!" - They answered happily here before, expressing their readiness to forgive Yanukovych all for one signature in Vilnius. "Yanukovych - to Gilyak!" - They answered here now, unless, of course, they agreed to speak with Moskal, it already smelled of gunpowder, and it was not up to values. And no one wondered how and why two Maidan was gloomy and without any inspiration weaved into one combat fist.

Two Maidans - in everything, and in this trouble of Ukraine, and its inexhaustible motor force. Ukraine has always been split and dualistic - but not to the west and east, not on the "Bandera" and "quilted jackets". She was divided into two Maidan. One is always preparing to become a party in power in which the West and East never competed, but organically complemented and used each other. On another, which is not going to be power, also not to geographical nuances, but a spectrum of political views on the envy of any popular front - from the extreme right and anarchists to liberals and neocommunists. But the principality of ideological disagreements as if only spurred the risk of romantic happy happy. And even people with banners and distinctive signs of UNA-UNSO, firstly, agreed with the need for European integration-at least in order to be away from Muscovites, and, secondly, they were not at all offended by liberals for their defiant cosmopolitanism. Then, on the barricades, the strong fighters of the “right -wing sector” of a bottle with Molotov cocktails, filled with bespectacled conservative students, passed the sixties to quite Jewish appearance. This is difficult to understand, if we proceed from the inviolability of myths about fascism and cotton wool.

A year has passed, the Ukrainian elite, regardless of the geographical affiliation of the oligarchs, as expected, is no better than the Russian one. Just in Ukraine, instead of one swamp, there are as many as two Maidan. And everything falls into place. One Maidan is trying to convert the revolution into the regime of thermidor, the other persistently reminds of who began this revolution. By the way, this time does not end in any way.

In the photo: Ukraine. Kyiv. November 23. During a rally on the Maidan, organized by the opposition against the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers to freeze the preparation of an agreement on an association with an eurozouza. Photo by TASS/ Maxim Nikitin