“I’ve had enough of this; nothing ever comes of it. I’m not going anywhere anymore,” I declared. At that time, my eldest son drew my attention to the protests in Greece, characterized by intense activism, Molotov cocktails, arson, clashes with the police, etc. He said, ‘This is how revolutions should be done, not ‘your thingamajig’ with songs, dancing, lanterns, and carnivals.’ It was obvious that, during that period, non-violent resistance — although we persisted in adopting it for several months — proved unfortunately ineffective. Isolated, without the support of violent resistance, it was unfortunately rather ineffective. Had it not been for the brutal and unmotivated dispersal at the stele [Independence Monument], where people were subjected to savage beatings, this Maidan would likely have been quashed. Those few hundred people standing there would have dispersed without making a significant mark if not for the attention and provocation that pushed them to escalate their actions. Peaceful resistance, although creative and beautiful, wouldn’t have achieved much on its own. My younger son, Roman, and I lived through these times together. The older son was with us too; we all lived together then. Although he had his own gatherings. Roman, the younger one, urged me after Mustafa Nayem’s post (take your thermos, umbrella, good mood, and head for the Maidan), saying, ‘Mum, let’s go, let’s at least see what’s going on. Come on, let’s go. Let’s go.’ I replied, ‘Listen, that’s it. I’ve had enough of this, and nothing will come of it.’ The weather was awful — fog, rain, warm yet damp, really awful. In the end, Roman persuaded me, but we didn’t go at 9:00 p.m. as announced but a bit later, in the night when most activists had already left the Maidan. We felt like solitary pixels, uncertain of the outcome, standing there because there was no alternative. Because there was no other choice… We stood there all night. I can’t remember whether it was Klitschko [Ukrainian boxing champion and politician] that provided us with a van equipped with a speaker and microphone or the people on the barricade itself managed to set it up. Anyone who wished to speak was given the platform. Yuriy Lutsenko arrived [Ukrainian politician and statesman], forewarning us of a potential Berkut assault [police unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in 1992–2014] at four in the morning, the usual hour for police assaults. He suggested wrapping it up peacefully and resolving it in a good way, as wise politicians usually advise. That’s the way it was. That whole story didn’t grab me at all initially. It felt like a futile endeavor, all about standing around, singing, jumping — and, as I understood it, seemingly leading nowhere. That’s how it went for a while. I remember our gatherings, with Oleksa Mann and Ivan Semesiuk in the mix; our artists were quite active then. The Bacteria formation was still doing its thing. The most amusing challenge — it was really quite funny — for us at that time, believe it or not, was avoiding the appearance of being a mere “sharovarshchyna” show [usually a negative term to depict Ukrainian culture through pseudo-folk elements of costume and life]. We needed to think up some creative slogans, visuals so that it would look good… Back then, everyone brushed off nationalist slogans as clichéd and ineffectual. They had no impact, especially over the youth. So, we attempted to inject some creative storytelling. It sounds amusing to reflect on it now. Yet, I believe that these creative efforts were the spark and the underlying message that shaped the Maidan into what it eventually became. It blossomed in Maidan universities, the IT tent, the theater, the stage, and more — a vibrant tableau crafted from the strands of collective creativity. During that time, there was a persistent attempt to assimilate Maidan into the Ukrainian House, and I could already foresee the outcome. A camp for Yulia Tymoshenko was set up in the Bessarabka area, complete with tents and crazy elderly ladies wandering around, probably looking to <…> It was evident to me that they aimed to extract some situational political gains, to sideline and confine the resistance to somewhere near the Ukrainian House, an obscure location that few visited, either on foot or by car. However, we kept going. On the night when Andriy Yermolenko [Ukrainian artist and designer] was present, we humorously referred to ourselves as the ‘Iron Sotnia,’ although in reality, we were no more than a hundred strong. We could see through the supposedly heated clashes with Svoboda, involving gas and whatnot — they all appeared staged. We made a collective decision that we wouldn’t abandon Maidan. There was only one Maidan, and it was ours; everything should happen here. All those stories about Ukrdim… well, forget it! They accused us of splitting the Maidans, a claim that made us laugh. Eventually, they realized that we were stubborn and that we weren’t budging, even in the rain with knee-deep puddles, that the so-called ‘Iron Sotnia’ would remain standing on the Maidan. Come morning, Ruslana joined our ranks. She began talking and singing, and while my feelings towards her role in both the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan are somewhat ambivalent, there, in that moment, she came to be with us and she stayed. I can’t shake the feeling that she was sent to unite us somehow. Regardless, we remained on the Maidan, stationed beneath the stele, where we began organizing a variety of concerts. Everything took a drastic turn after the brutal beating on the night of November 30 to December 1. It was a watershed moment, a point of no return. I still don’t understand why they orchestrated such a provocation. It undoubtedly triggered the Million Man March, leading to the storming of Bankova [Presidential Administration on Bankova Street] and the subsequent cascade of events. Yet, in the midst of it all, there was a spark of inspiration, a belief that it would lead to something significant.”