Maidan Library: The Emergence of a Protest Library within Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity

Abstract

This article’s focus is the emergence of the Maidan protest library in Kyiv during the 2014 Ukrainian “Revolution of Dignity.” While the revolution began as a political protest, it quickly shifted into widespread ethical outrage over the government’s treatment of Ukrainian youth. One indicator of the deep levels of social dissatisfaction among the public was the emergence of a physical library within the intense, dangerous, and temporary occupation of a public building during the conflict. Examining the Maidan Library and its collection of several thousand books within the encampment can illuminate some of the notable ways in which language, power, and security function within the space of radical politics. This article contextualizes this particular Ukrainian space within a much larger trend of protest libraries around the world that includes Occupy Wall Street’s People’s Library, in New York, and Madrid’s BiblioSol, the library within the Indignados’ occupation of Puerta del Sol.