“Emily, we just occupied the Ministry! Come down here, you’re going to want to write about this!” When she received this exuberant phone call from an activist friend in February 2014, Emily Channell-Justice was on Khreshchatyk taking photos of memorials for protesters who had been killed in the Euromaidan mobilizations. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych had just been ousted, in a culmination of the shocking turn of events that saw pro-European protests evolve into a political revolution in Ukraine. In Kyiv doing fieldwork for her dissertation on leftists (diverse groups who associate themselves with the political "left") and social activism, Channell-Justice found herself in the center of one of the most significant events in Ukraine since its independence.
The lasting impact of Euromaidan was bittersweet: a triumph for democracy as Ukrainians stood up for the type of society they wanted and began the long process of eradicating corruption. At the same time, Russia illegally annexed Crimea and Russian-backed separatists began a war in eastern Ukraine. Eight years later, with tens of thousands killed and over a million displaced, that ongoing war would transform into a full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022.
In the short-term, too, these events were bittersweet, with deep, painful losses. “After three days filled with death, suffering, and fear, hearing a familiar voice speak with such jubilance is something I’ll never forget,” Channell-Justice said, reflecting on the moment she learned about student activists’ occupation of the Ministry of Education and Sciences. “And going to the Ministry, seeing piles of food that had been donated juxtaposed with the ornate, unapproachable architecture of that building, that all really encompassed what the protests were all about.”
Channell-Justice’s research on the Euromaidan is now available as a monograph published by Toronto University Press (November 2022). Without the State: Self-Organization and Political Activism in Ukraine centers on the concept of self-organization, examining how it was adopted by groups of all political persuasions during the Euromaidan to effect change. Shifting Ukrainians’ attitudes toward what they expect from the state and how they view their responsibility toward each other, practices of self-organization have shaped post-Maidan society and emerged as a critical component in Ukraine’s heroic response to Russia’s full-scale war.
Serving as the Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at HURI since its founding in July 2019, Channell-Justice has continued to conduct research in Ukraine, currently focusing on internally displaced persons and refugees. Under her leadership, TCUP has produced and disseminated factual resources on Ukraine and the war, while appealing for support for Ukraine and advocating for the inclusion of Ukrainian voices in conversations on Ukraine. Ahead of her November 30 Seminar in Ukrainian Studies, “Without the State: Self-Organization and Political Activism in Ukraine,” we asked Channell-Justice a few questions about her research, the book, the war, and the remarkable strength of Ukrainian society.
HURI: As Russia’s war rages on in Ukraine, Ukrainians have time and again surprised the world with their tenacity and perseverance in holding off an army mightier than their own and in mobilizing networks to help people both on and off the battlefield. While scholars of Ukraine, like yourself, can’t help but be impressed by Ukraine’s performance, I think it was less surprising to anyone previously familiar with Ukrainians’ political and civic activity. This book is particularly timely, even though it presents your research from the 2014 Euromaidan protests. How do the values, activity, and capacity you observed in 2014 speak to Ukraine’s endurance in the past eight months?
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Emily Channell-Justice: Like many other experts, I didn’t predict that Russia would fully invade Ukraine and attempt to take over its entire territory in February 2022. However, I did state, on the record, several times, that Ukrainians would fight back if this happened.
I was privileged to be present at the Euromaidan protests, known now as the Revolution of Dignity. I remember the very first days of those protests, when a few people gathered on Kyiv’s Independence Square, and, to be honest, I didn’t think much would happen. But when the Berkut (riot police) beat and arrested students who had occupied the square on November 30, 2013, everything changed. People came out in great numbers because state actors had crossed a line. And they stayed until they had forced the president (Viktor Yanukovych) and all his cronies out of power.
Then, when Russia’s war in Ukraine first started in February 2014, following the removal of Yanukovych, those same people volunteered to go to the front and fight, and they organized to respond to the massive numbers of people displaced by the fighting.
Watching all of these things unfold, I knew that Ukrainians would stand up for themselves against Russian forces when the full-scale invasion began. I also knew that most people in Russia as well as in the West would underestimate Ukrainians’ ability to fight back. At the same time, it is frustrating to watch Ukrainians have to fight for their sovereignty over and over again. While Ukrainians are amazing the world with their tenacity and resilience, they should not be in this position. Olesya Khromeychuk has articulated quite effectively how Ukraine was absent from people’s “mental maps” of Europe – and this absence cleared the path for Russia’s condemnable actions.
HURI: Let’s talk about the title of the book, “Without the State: Self-Organization and Political Activism in Ukraine.” Why did you choose this title?
ECJ: The title comes directly from a quote from an interview with a Ukrainian feminist and leftist activist who described organizing the evacuation of women and children from Crimea after Russia’s illegal annexation as being done “without any help from the state” (без одної допомоги з боку держави). This description really encompassed how activists saw themselves responding to what was needed: there was no need to wait for state actors to do something when activists could do it themselves. That’s the key idea behind self-organization; if something needs to be done, and someone has the ability to do it, they should simply do it.
In the book, I trace how leftist activists base their understanding of this concept on Marxist thought, but that by its very nature, it’s a flexible and fluid concept. Over the course of the Euromaidan protests, “self-organization” as a concept became detached from its political roots. The entire protests were self-organized, and the obvious success of self-organization changed how people related to the Ukrainian state. More broadly, I also trace the trajectory of self-organization throughout Ukraine's robust history of protest movements.
I understand “the state” to be the amalgamation of actors and institutions that act in the name of Ukraine. In 2012 and 2013, when I started my research, this state was led by Viktor Yanukovych. The other actors that made up the state were beholden to Russian interests, and the institutions that made up the state were understood to be rife with corruption and unable (and unwilling) to represent the interests of regular people in Ukraine. So activists fighting against the state and who worked without the state were in fact pushing back against the incompetencies and weaknesses of the Yanukovych-era state.
HURI: In the current war, President Zelensky’s leadership has been another pleasant surprise, with an extremely positive effect on morale and international support for Ukraine. Why is it still important to recognize mobilization apart from the government?
ECJ: Overwhelmingly, we see Ukrainians from all political backgrounds supporting President Zelensky’s leadership in response to Russia’s invasion. I have also personally been impressed by his ability to represent Ukraine so admirably on the world stage. He is masterfully not letting the world forget about Ukraine. At the same time, he appears to recognize that he owes his position entirely to the Ukrainian people (the name of his party, Servant of the People, is ringing true). And without the efforts of those people, he would not be able to do anything for Ukraine. I would clarify that Ukrainians are not necessarily fighting for Zelensky or because of Zelensky’s actions. They’re mobilizing to fight for Ukraine however they can do it best–some are in the Armed Forces, including in Territorial Defense Brigades; some are funding, sourcing, and delivering humanitarian and military aid; and some are representing Ukraine abroad. These diverse aspects of mobilization are arguably equally important, so I see Zelensky as fighting on one of the many fronts Ukraine is facing now.
HURI: In the same vein, Kyiv’s former Deputy Mayor Kostyantyn Usov, who is now at Harvard’s Kennedy School, has spoken about the extremely effective decentralized mobilization that happened at the very start of the war. Specifically, he has recounted how people didn’t wait for instruction from above; they just knew what needed to be done and did it. Citizens and civil servants alike rerouted services, such as public transportation, to move people to safety. How are Ukrainians so good at this, and what can citizens in other democracies learn from them?
ECJ: Ukrainians are so good at this because this isn’t the first time they’ve done it. I mentioned earlier that people self-organized in the wake of the first Russian invasion in 2014. This included people in Kyiv and abroad sourcing equipment for self-defense brigades, as well as people volunteering for those brigades in whatever capacity they could (though I should clarify that in 2014, the scale of this kind of response was much smaller than in 2022). In cities closer to Donetsk and Luhansk, regular people, many of whom participated in their local Euromaidan protests, were the first people who responded to help the people who escaped the fighting. In 2021, I did interviews with several Ukrainians who worked for international organizations to help internally displaced people (IDPs), and most of them got started in this sphere because they were part of their city’s self-organized response. The big organizations only came in to help much later. So part of the explanation for people’s successful mobilization in 2022 is that they knew what to do because they had already done it.
Another important factor was the reform of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. When Russia first invaded in 2014, the UAF was in a vulnerable position and couldn’t effectively fight back. Volunteer brigades, many of which formed during Euromaidan, mobilized to go to the front to fight. Eventually, as part of the reforms, these brigades were brought into the UAF, and the idea of the Territorial Defense was institutionalized. Many readers may not know that the Territorial Defense Forces were only officially integrated into the UAF in 2022! What does this all mean for Ukraine’s response? While the Territorial Defense battalions are volunteer-based, rather than a professional army, many volunteers have combat experience because they fought sometime between 2014 and 2021. This contributes to the overall effectiveness of Ukraine’s response, because the Territorial Defense Forces serve a variety of humanitarian and combat roles, all in addition to the professional army, which is also dramatically better trained and better equipped than it was in 2014.
HURI: Let’s talk about political affiliations a little. Your research is rooted in leftist groups (a designation that can encompass people from radical anarchists to democratic socialists to people who just associate with the idea of "the left"), but you discuss how the same self-organization techniques were embraced across the political spectrum during the Euromaidan and beyond. How does this speak to the richness of Ukraine’s political community and its ability to maintain a political plurality within a strong, united sense of civic nationalism? What was unique about the leftist groups that you studied and how have they shifted their activities with Russia’s invasion in 2022?
ECJ: When I started my research in 2012, I wanted to explore the dynamics of higher education activism. I was especially interested in an independent student union called Priama Diia, which has a broadly defined leftist political platform. I was also interested in working with other student organizations, including those with other political platforms. Of course, the Euromaidan protests began early in my fieldwork in 2013, so I ended up mostly following these protests with leftist student and feminist activists, who had thus fair been the key informants of my research.
I argue in the book that leftist political beliefs are often associated with communism—this discussion came up over and over again—even though the young leftist activists I worked with were not members of the Communist Party of Ukraine and had no interest in returning to the Soviet Union. In fact, they were some of the first people who encouraged me to think about Ukraine as a post-colonial state, a position that’s seeing renewed interest in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Notably, leftists are not a majority or dominant voice in Ukraine. While their posters and banners were not always welcome during the protests and they regularly faced violence, they continued to go to demonstrations and they wanted their voices to be heard. To me, what this shows is a remarkable instance of political plurality in Ukraine. The Euromaidan protests did not have one singular voice—but this is not a detraction, it’s what made them so effective. My work is telling one part of the story, a story that is enriched by diversity and the freedom for those ideas to be brought to the public sphere.
It’s essential to understand that these leftists believed and believe in Ukraine’s sovereignty and self-determination as much as far-right or centrist groups. Their criticism focused on the actors that made up the state and whose interests those actors would serve. That a minority political group like these leftists can be part of this conversation is a testament to the democratic conditions made possible by an independent Ukraine; leftists, therefore, take Ukrainian independence very seriously.
HURI: Leftists outside of Ukraine have criticized military support for Ukraine and advocated for negotiations to end the war in the name of peace and pacifism. However, you and others have called them out for not listening to their fellow leftists in Ukraine. What are leftists in Ukraine saying? Why is calling for negotiations and pacifism not a viable option for Ukraine right now? How can the international leftist community better support their counterparts in Ukraine?
ECJ: The position of the global left against military aid to Ukraine shows me how important it is to represent the position of Ukrainian leftists. Like with any political group, not all Ukrainian leftists agree on how to represent Ukraine to the world now, but the vast majority of people whom I worked with are volunteering in some capacity—mostly in territorial defense or to fund, source, and distribute humanitarian aid. Some of the Ukrainian leftists who have taken on the task of explaining their position—anti-war, but pro-military aid for Ukraine—have done exceptional work, yet it continues to be ignored globally: earlier this month, there was a so-called “leftist” event to discuss peace in Ukraine in New York City, which didn’t feature a single Ukrainian voice. This is just a willful ignorance because Ukrainian leftist voices are not serving their narrative. Taras Bilous, a Ukrainian editor for the leftist journal Commons, has articulated his position resisting the invasion especially well. And Commons recently published a nice piece highlighting the work of leftist volunteers. It’s so important to recognize that people of all political positions are fighting for Ukraine’s right to exist. I hope this helps push back against the misconceptions that many people have about what it means to be a leftist in contemporary Ukraine.
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HURI: On a personal level: You aren’t Ukrainian but you clearly love Ukraine. Many non-Ukrainians come to study or work on Ukraine after first learning Russian or studying Russia. What drew you to study the country, including the language? And how do you bring nuance to your work as a non-Ukrainian who puts extreme value on listening to, privileging, and elevating the voices of Ukrainians?
ECJ: I first went to Ukraine in 2004, and the people I met then are the foundation for all my work in Ukraine (my two dearest friends, who I met in Kyiv in 2004, are both now serving in the Territorial Defense Forces). They always supported my interest in Ukraine and my desire to research there, so I really credit them with encouraging me. Even though Russian was a much more commonly used language then, they suggested I study Ukrainian, and I’m so grateful they pushed me in that direction. I’ve loved studying Ukrainian (in Lviv and Kyiv, as well as in New York and here in Cambridge), and seeing more and more people turn to using Ukrainian in their day-to-day lives is one of the lights in this dark time.
I’ve been really lucky that so many people in Ukraine supported my research efforts over the past ten years that I was working on this project that’s represented in my book. I’ve read their own writing on the topics I discuss (I cite a lot of them in my book), I’ve talked things out and disagreed with people, and I’ve incorporated many of their suggestions into my analysis. I’m very privileged to have had this support, and I can’t wait for them to read the book.
HURI: Apart from those in Ukrainian studies, who would be interested in this book? You are an anthropologist, and this book is based on your own original ethnographic research. For the unfamiliar, what is ethnographic research and what are the unique insights it can contribute?
ECJ: The book is an ethnography, so it’s of interest to a general anthropology and social science audience. I hope that others who study social movements will also read this book, as it represents a definitive moment of mobilization. My ethnographic methods are also what makes the book’s perspective unique. It’s based on a combination of interviews and participant observation. The latter means that I went to Kyiv’s Maidan nearly every day from November 22, 2013, to June 30, 2014, and these observations make up a substantial amount of my evidence (I also traveled to Lviv and Cherkasy to experience some other cities’ protest dynamics). I interviewed leftist activists who were participating, as well as those watching from abroad, and I use these conversations to delve into what Euromaidan meant, both to them as individuals, as well as for Ukraine. Some of my evidence is very particular—I am only telling part of a much bigger story, and it can only represent one moment in time. Anthropology’s careful methods help document the nuances of situations like mass mobilizations, when it’s common to have information overload. I’ve spoken with other anthropologists who were also in Ukraine for some part of Euromaidan, and their experiences were completely different from mine. Neither is more valid than the other; rather, together, they help us understand how complex moments of mass protest are.
I think anthropology lends itself to nuance, and our task really begins with listening (though that’s not to say all anthropologists do this equally well). I work from a position of grounded theory, where I let what I observe and what I learn from interviews orient my analysis. This means that it’s really important to understand where people are coming from and to represent them honestly. In my book, there’s a chapter that features two profiles of leftist activists, who have very different opinions about political activism, what it means to be a leftist, and Euromaidan. While preparing the manuscript, I asked them to read the interviews we did in 2013 and 2014, and then we sat and talked about what they said then, how their opinions and priorities had changed, and how they saw Ukraine’s future. I talked through so many parts of the book with activists during the writing process, because I wanted to be sure that what I was presenting resonated with them. I’m sure they won’t all agree with every single sentence, but this technique allows for their voices to come through more clearly.
HURI: If people were to take one message or conclusion from your book, what would you like it to be?
ECJ: The world is a pretty hopeless place sometimes, so I hope people who read the book take some inspiration from the commitment of activists who keep fighting for what they believe in. They are an embodiment of one of anthropologist Margaret Mead’s most famous quotes: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful and committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”