Unravelling the Ukrainian Revolution: "Dignity," "Fairness," "Heterarchy," and the Challenge to Modernity
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Date
2020
Authors
Wynnyckyj, Mychailo
Journal Title
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Abstract
Ukraine’s "Revolution of Dignity," spanning both the 2013-2014 protests in Kyiv’s city
center and the mass mobilization of grass-roots resistance against Russian aggression
in 2014-2015 and thereafter, manifest new interpretations of ideas and philosophical
concepts. In the first part of the article we unravel the meaning of the Ukrainian
word hidnist (roughly translated as "dignity") — a moniker of the revolution whose
significance remains underestimated. In the second part we situate Ukraine’s revolution
within a broader context of "modernity" and suggest its individualist foundation
may be replaced by a form of "personalism"— an ethic that echoes that of Ukraine’s
revolutionaries. In the third part of the article, we delve into the substance of the
revolution’s agenda: its protagonists’ promise to build a non-hierarchical community
of "fairness" (spravedlyvist). In the fourth and final section, the main argument of the
article is summarized, namely: that the shift from individualism to personalism in
social interaction and the transition from hierarchy to heterarchy in power relations,
particularly with respect to institutionalizing "fairness," embodied in the various
structures and organizations formed during Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, may have
been reflective of more comprehensive trends in ideational change affecting European
(Western) civilization.
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Keywords
Ukraine, Revolution, Euromaidan, personalism, dignity, heterarchy, article
Citation
Wynnyckyj M. Unravelling the Ukrainian Revolution: "Dignity," "Fairness," "Heterarchy," and the Challenge to Modernity / Mychailo Wynnyckyj // Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal. - 2020. - № 7. - P. 123-140.