Intellectuals in Ukraine have expressed different opinions concerning the Euromaidan protests and Revolution of 2013-14.

At the same time, how­ever, they have shown a remarkable degree of consensus on key issues. Between August and October 2015, in a series of interviews, some of the country’s leading scholars and opinion-makers were asked how they viewed the most significant changes that had taken place in their society since the Euromaidan demonstrations of 2013-14 which ended with the “Revolu­tion of Dignity” in February-March 2014 and was followed by war with Russia after the latter invaded Crimea.

When the Euromaidan began in November 2013, narratives in the Western media at first focused on Ukraine’s linguistic and regional divi­sions. After March of 2014, they moved to discussions of Russia’s invasion of Crimea and then to war in the Donbas-Luhansk oblasts. Ukraine’s future and the adequacy or inadequacy of Western responses were promi­nent topics. Much commentary at the time was devoted to speculation concerning Vladimir Putin’s motives; the Kremlin’s desire to undermine not only the Ukrainian state, but the European Union and NATO; and the war of information/disinformation.² The views of Ukraine’s intellectuals were often missing from this commentary. How did they characterize events and Western media coverage? In 2015, a number of books dealing with the Euromaidan appeared in Ukraine, including scholarly studies, journalistic accounts, and anthologies of blogs, emails, poems, and other statements written during the events. The materials in the collections had been selected from an enormous number of texts posted on the internet by many individuals. Both these publications and the interviews conducted for this article provide a retrospective glance at the turbulent events of the previous twenty-two months. They represented a moment in 2015 during which those who had witnessed and in most cases participated in the events could take stock of the situation and anticipate future developments.³