DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7707932
title: Resolutions of Local Maidans, November 2013 - February 2014

description: This is a collection of local Maidans' resolutions – primary documents composed and voted by local Maidan assemblies from November 2013 through February 2014. Local Maidan resolutions are an important source of information about the dynamics of local protests and the contents of the protesters' claims during Ukraine’s 2013-14 Euromaidan social movement. The data are presented as an MS Excel document detailing the date, location (locality and oblast), actual text and source of a local Maidan resolution. <strong>Background</strong> In 2013-14, residents in all regions of Ukraine gathered for local protest rallies, called Maidans, people’s “<em>viches”</em> and meetings (jointly referred to as “local Maidans”), and issued demands towards local and national authorities. To add credibility to local Maidans' decisions, to disseminate information on protest and foster mobilization, these local assemblies had often put their claims in writing by issuing an assembly resolution and voting for its text. Resolutions were picked up and published by individual users of social media, local offices of public organizations and political parties, and local media. Using this and other outreach strategies, local Maidan communities around the country attempted to pressure local authorities, weaken the regime’s control and push the government into concessions over national and local issues. <strong>Data Collection Methodology</strong> I collected data on local Maidans' resolutions during 2014-15 by addressing the members of protest assemblies and organizations, contacting Ukrainian archives and museums, and by a complex Internet search algorithm that I designed. In particular, during 2013-14 local Maidans held All-Ukrainian Forums of Euromaidans to share experiences and coordinate efforts. I contacted the organizing committee and asked them to distribute my call for the collection of the original documents produced by local Maidans among Forums’ participants. I also contacted institutions in Ukraine that work on preserving Maidan history. Among these are the Lviv Oblast Archive, which presented an exhibit of documents on the Euromaidan movement in Lviv oblast, and the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, which launched the Maidan archive in cooperation with the CSO “Maidan Museum.” I performed an Internet search using the following advanced Google search algorithms in Ukrainian and Russian: <em>(viche OR meeting) AND (resolution OR demand OR statement) AND (city OR rayon OR oblast);</em> <em>Regional Maidan AND resolution AND (viche OR meeting);</em> <em>(Maidan or Euromaidan) AND resolution AND (viche OR meeting).</em> In some cases, the text I found was titled e.g. “the resolution of the <em>second</em> city viche” (italics added), which suggested there might be several texts produced in the same locality. In such cases, I browsed the websites which published the initial text for the keywords of the algorithm. Additionally, I devised a location-focused search algorithm (in either Ukrainian or Russian, depending on the language of the initially-found text). For example, <em>[(viche OR protest) AND (resolution OR demands OR address) AND Chernivtsy] or [Chernivtsy AND resolution AND (second OR third) AND city viche].</em> I also searched for videos of adopting Maidans' resolutions on YouTube – the biggest global source of video content, using the following algorithms, in Ukrainian and Russian: <em>Maidan resolution;</em> <em>Euromaidan resolution;</em> <em>Resolution of people’s viche.</em> <strong>Data Cleaning</strong> I applied the following filters to the documents I collected: the text had to reflect the meeting of a local community, and thus decisions of local and regional authorities who claimed to speak “on behalf of local people” were separated from this collection; the text of a resolution had to be presented in full -- I disregarded newspaper interpretations and excerpts; and a source had to have a clear indication of both the date and the place of the event where a resolution was adopted. <strong>Data Characteristics</strong> For November 2013 to February 2014, I found 94 resolutions that were adopted by 57 localities in 20 Ukraine's oblasts. Among these 57 localities, 31 are cities; of these 15 are oblast centers. The remaining 26 resolutions were adopted by the communities representing rayons, which are composed of towns and villages. Localities are quite diverse in size, ranging from 1.4 million residents (Kharkiv, Kharkiv oblast) to only 20,000 residents (Truskavets, Lviv oblast). On average, localities that adopted a Maidan resolution had below 200,000 residents; the median locality had 70,000 residents. The earliest resolutions date back to November 24, 2013. The most recent one was voted on February 27, 2014. The minimum number of resolutions adopted by a locality in this collection is one and the maximum is five. The collection is composed of 94 resolutions, declarations, addresses and decisions of local Maidans, which are jointly referred to as <em>resolutions</em>. A typical resolution is a one-page document, containing statements of protesters’ self-identification, the reasons for the protest, the demands to national and local authorities, calls for mobilization, and declarations of support or condemnation. Most of the local Maidan resolutions are in Ukrainian, and six texts are in Russian. It is important to note that by <em>texts </em>I refer mostly to the content of <em>text</em> <em>documents</em>. There were, however, few exceptions when I found the links to <em>video</em> <em>or graphic </em>evidence of the resolution proclamation. About half of the resolutions (55 texts out of 94) come from local media and include those published on local media outlets’ web pages and YouTube channels. These include 34 newspaper articles - usually short informative pieces, providing an introduction, some background information on the protests, a resolution text in full, and sometimes brief interviews with the speakers and the participants. In 18 cases, only a resolution text was published. In three cases I only have the videos of resolution adoption, usually accompanied by background information. Out of 55 cases, 25 news posts had no reference to the author at all, 18 were marked as “editorial”, and the remaining 12 news posts indicated the name of the journalist. The sources of the texts varied. Twelve texts were found on the web pages of local authorities (rayon and city councils, rayon state administrations). The other sources include CSOs' web pages, social media channels and blogs (12 texts), and local branches of political parties (five texts). Ten texts were posted by individual protesters on their private social media profiles (Facebook, personal YouTube channels, and blogs). <strong>Potential Data Limitations</strong> The local Maidan data is not a sample, but rather an attempt to collect the whole of the phenomenon, albeit within specific parameters. I attempted a comprehensive collection of local Maidan resolutions within a particular definition of local Maidan. I also limited the collection to a particular time. During Euromaidan not every locality had a protest and not every protest group chose to adopt a resolution. In some instances, the information about both the protest and the resolution can be found, but the text of the actual document remains out of reach. Yet, there may be some localities, which had both the protest and the resolution, that are not in my collection. These considerations illustrate the complexity of Ukrainian Euromaidan – a spontaneous, grassroots movement without open central coordination and record-keeping, and highlight that the exact universe of local Maidans cannot be fully assessed. Acknowledging this complexity, this collection is likely the largest and most complete of its kind.