#postmaidan

My blog “postmaidan” went offline again. This time my exhibition is shown till the 28th of february in the center of Kyiv, in the Ukrainian House. Thanks for a nice opening!

My last visit to Ukraine was in 2012. Before the war, before Maidan. I travelled to Donbass and Crimea back then, places I cannot (easily) visit anymore. Ukraine that I knew from my holidays was replaced by pictures of peaceful and violent protests and later by videos of war. Ukraine had obviously changed in those two years I hadn’t been there. But how?

October and November 2015 I spent in Ukraine and I met people: When I was shopping for some vegetables, I talked to them during my travels, staying with them on couchsurfing, I arranged meetings with “friends of friends”.

Alexander is from Luhansk, he has been living in Kharkiv for 6 years now. His mother and grandmother live in Luhansk and he hasn’t seen them for over a year and a half. His wife was pregnant during Maidan. He really wanted to go to Kiev but his wife is more important, of course, he told me.

“My mother has zombie influence on her brain. She doesn’t like our new government but she also doesn’t like how it is in the east right now. We trying our best not to phone each other…No one can hide from changes. If anyone doesn’t want these changes, nobody will ask him. These changes have come and are happening now. The older generation stopped their work in society and the now young generation has another construction of mind and they will make our society better. It is not necessarily my generation, I am 32 and was born in the Soviet Union, I am talking about the generation that was born after 1990.

I am a representative of the generation that just became older during this time.

My wife says: Ukraine must be strong without European Union but i say that Ukraine cannot be strong without the help from outside.

As for me I would rather go to Europe than stay here. I need him to have a normal life and a normal education for my son. Long distance love of one’s motherland is said to be the greatest love of motherland.

Oleksiy is waiting for a visa to Poland right now. He comes from Lugansk and fled to Lithuania when the fighting got to dangerous for him and his family.

„Not all people from Lugansk are separatists. We organised a Euromaidan there, we were a group of active people, who wanted to change something in our city. For two months I went to the central square. I was a professor at the university back then, we organised a street university where everyone could come and join our free lectures. We protested for a better education, for an European integration.

However, it became dangerous at some stage. Russians cleared the square in a march in 2014 and then the personal problems of activists got bigger: There was data of us on the internet. After I was threatened personally, I decided to leave with my family to Lithuania, we have friends there. We moved to Poland some months later but we didn't get a visa as political refugees. So I am applying for a business visa now because I have some ideas for an export business. There is a perspective for us.

Maidan changed everything for us. People are more free now, are closer to the European Union, Ukraine is on a different level now. People started loving their country because of the war. More of us understand now that Russia is an aggressor. Russian people think Ukraine is a part of Russia but after Maidan they understand that we have our history, our minds, our values.

Yulia is from Luhansk, she organised actions on the “Maidan” in Luhansk. When it got too dangerous, she left to Kyiv. There she and some friends founded the NGO “Vostok-SOS”. They help people fleeing from the war but also people remaining in the ATO zone with clothes and food.

“My life has changed after Maidan and after the war began. I was taught by Maidan, that we feel now that we are the country, people are the country. Maidan has altered our minds, we realised that we need to continue this transformation.

Ukrainian youth is not used to taking responsibility, people are used to saying that nothing could be changed, everything is managed by someone, things happen as they are, it's better to stand aside. But after and especially during Maidan the understanding has changed - we are the people who should do something, we live in this country, we should change it.

Nazar was playing on one of the pianos standing in Kiev. Those instruments are a remainder of Maidan. 

“I learned piano on Maidan, I taught myself.