THE UKRAINIAN NIGHT
An Intimate History of Revolution
Marci Shore
Yale University Press
290 pages; $26
On November 21, 2013, Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s President, abruptly suspended long-running negotiations on an association agreement with the European Union. Though Mr Yanukovych personified the corruption, cronyism and oligarchical capitalism rampant in Ukraine, he had previously promoted the accord, which many Ukrainians, particularly in the country’s center and west, anticipated as a pathway to a better life and communion with the West.
Within hours, thanks to Facebook and Twitter, protesters thronged Kiev’s Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti). Once the riot police started beating demonstrators, and especially after the first fatalities,
