Ukrainian Night: Very Personal Stories of the Revolution

The book is recognized as extremist in Belarus

"Ukrainian Night. An Intimate History of Revolution" is a book about the fates of people who found themselves at the very heart of historical events. American researcher and writer Marci Shore collected impressions, stories, and experiences of participants in the Ukrainian revolution to show it through human experience, not just through dry facts. This is a narrative about choice and responsibility, about dignity and pain, about the search for meaning at a time when history becomes very personal. The 2023 edition transports the reader from 2014 to the present, showing how war and time change people and their memories.

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“This was the last European revolution, and it has – for now – not yet taken its proper place in the general and shared history of Europe.” This book is about the experience of that revolution, revealed through the stories of its participants. Among them is Katya Mishchenko, a German scholar and editor, to whom the first sentence belongs. In 2023, as I write these words, the heroes of my book find themselves in even more hellish conditions than one could have imagined in the winter of 2013-2014. This text will tell about the lives of some of the book's characters over the past decade, bridging the gap between 2014 and 2023.
What, however, does it mean to build a bridge in times of war? War destroys bridges. It destroys borders. It cripples space and accelerates time, "shortens the distance," writes Ukrainian poet Halyna Kruk, "from person to person, from birth to death."
War strips language of nuances; and fresh blood gives words a heavy aftertaste.
(c) Marci Shore. From the preface to the 2023 edition