The Winter of Our Discontent: Emotions and
Contentious Politics in Ukraine during Euromaidan
Author: Ivan Gomza, Nadiia Koval
Source: Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal 1 (2015): 39–62
Published by: National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
http://kmlpj.ukma.edu.ua/
The Winter of Our Discontent: Emotions and
Contentious Politics in Ukraine during Euromaidan
Ivan Gomza
National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy,
Department of Political Science
Nadiia Koval
National Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract
Drawing upon 60 semi-structured interviews, this study adopts an emotion-centered approach
to studying the non-violent phase of Euromaidan protests in Ukraine. We find that, first, the
overlapping and mutual amplifying of two successive moral shocks was the primary mechanism
of mobilization. The mobilizing success of the moral shocks is interpreted through introducing
the notion of emotional path dependence. Second, the nature of moral shock is explained
as a combination of emotional and cognitive components. Third, we find that emotional
components of collective identity construction created moral barriers between a brotherhood
of virtuous protesters and profoundly immoral antagonists, which, combined with the perceived
universality of claims, rendered the bystanders’ position unacceptable.
Key Words: social movements, moral shock, Euromaidan, mobilization, collective identity,
emotions.
3
At the end of 2013 Ukraine experienced an eruption of contentious politics known under
the brand of Euromaidan. The latter was profoundly imbued with and driven by emotions:
people inspiringly sang the national anthem on Independence Square, ferociously stormed the
presidential residence with a bulldozer, resolutely occupied governmental building, triumphantly
knocked over Lenin’s monuments and hurriedly sought sanctuary in a medieval cathedral after
merciless acts of police brutality. We are interested in exploring what role emotions played
in mobilizing thousands of people to the streets and in keeping them there for months. Our
focus is consistent not only with the emotionalized course of protest events, but also with the
theoretical agenda of “bringing the emotions back in” in studying the contentious politics.1
1
See for instance Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper and Francesca Polletta, “The Return of the Repressed:
The Fall and Rise of Emotions in Social Movement Theory,” Mobilization 5.1 (2000): 65–83; Deborah
Gould, “Passionate Political Processes: Bringing Emotions Back into the Study of Social Movements,”
in Rethinking Social Movements, ed. Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal 1 (2015)
40
This article begins by exploring the theoretical foundations of studying the role of
emotions in contentious politics, with special attention given to the notion of moral shock.
Second, we study two moral shocks that brought to life the Euromaidan protests and introduce
the idea of emotional path dependency. Third, we consider the role of emotions in sustaining
the protest and creating the emotional community of the protesters by exploring their attitude
to the antagonists, bystanders and companions.
Theoretical Context
The very first attempt to understand the nature of contentious politics, the collective behavior
paradigm,2 overloaded as it was with an emphasis upon emotions, was primitive, irrational,
and chaotic. A backflow in the theory of contentious politics, i. e., the resource mobilization
paradigm,3 considered contentious politics as well-planned activities seeking to achieve
collective goods. Although theoretically opposed to the collective behavior tradition, the
resource mobilization theory ignored emotions as irrational and incompatible with effective
resource mobilization.
In the late 1980s, the drift of movement culture studies and collective identity studies to the
focus of social movements’ research4 opened the way to recognizing emotions as components of
social movement culture.5 Exploring the foundations of collective identity, Melucci emphasized
that it consists of cognizing process, social networks and “emotional investment, which enables
Littlefield, 2003), 155–75; Mustafa Emirbayer and Chad A. Goldberg, “Pragmatism, Bourdieu, and
Collective Emotions in Contentious Politics” Theory and Society 34 (2005): 469–518.
2
See Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie des foules (Paris: Édition Félix Alcan, 1905); Eric Hoffer, The True
Believer (New York: Frederic A. Praeger, 1962); Herbert Blumer, “Collective Behavior,” in Principles
of Sociology, ed. Alfred McClung Lee (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969), 65–121.
3
See Anthony Oberschall, Social Conflict and Social Movements (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall,
1973); William A Gamson, The Strategy of Social Protest (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1975); John D.
McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory,”
American Journal of Sociology 82.6 (1977): 1212–41.
4
See Alain Touraine, La Voix et le Regard (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1978); Jean Cohen, “Strategy or
Identity: New Theoretical Paradigms and Contemporary Social Movements,” Social Research 52.4
(1985): 663–716; Doug McAdam, “Culture and Social Movements,” in New Social Movements: From
Ideology to Identity, ed. Enrique Laraña, Hank Johnston and Joseph R. Gusfield (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1994), 36–57; Myra Marx Ferree and Frederick D. Miller, “Mobilization and Meaning:
Toward an Integration of Social Psychological and Resource Mobilization Perspectives on Social
Movements,” Sociological Inquiry 55.1 (1985): 38–51.
5
See for instance John Lofland, “Charting Degrees of Movement Culture: Tasks of the Cultural
Cartographer,” in Social Movements and Culture, ed. Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 188–216; Suzanne Staggenborg, “The ‘Meso’ in
Social Movement Research,” in Social Movements: Identity, Culture, and the State, ed. David S. Meyer,
Nancy Whittier, and Belinda Robnett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 124–40.
Ivan Gomza, Nadiia Koval. The Winter of Our Discontent: Emotions
41
and Contentious Politics in Ukraine during Euromaidan
individuals to feel like part of a common unity.”6 Many scholars followed Melucci, binding
emotions to the process of collective identity formation.7 Thus, cultural identity approaches have
opened the door for the full-scale studying of emotions in social movements and after “twenty
years of theory and research,”8 the discipline has produced valuable theoretic accomplishments.
Firstly, scholars rejected the idea of a dichotomy between rational cognition and emotional
reaction. Gamson emphasizes that cognizing process is laden with emotion.9 Jasper argued in
a number of publications that understanding emotions as purely irrational and unpredictable
reactions was erroneous.10 He distinguished five types of emotions: urges, reflexes, affects,
moods, and moral emotions. The latter, he supposed, being the most complex, socially
embedded, and tightly connected with cognizing process are the most important for collective
action.11 According to Jasper’s conclusions, rational and irrational components are equally
mixed within the triad of cognition, emotion, and morality.12 As he and his collaborators put it,
“by defining rationality in contrast to — and as incompatible with — emotionality, resource
mobilization and political process theorists missed powerful springs of collective action.”13
That itinerary was followed by other scholars who started incorporating emotional elements
into their studies.14 Still, the interaction between emotions and cognition during mobilization
requires further conceptualization.
6
Alberto Melucci, “The Process of Collective Identity in Social Movements and Culture,” in Social
Movements and Culture, ed. Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1995), 44–45.
7
See for instance David A. Snow and Doug McAdam, “Identity Work Processes in the Context of Social
Movements: Clarifying the Identity/Movement Nexus,” in Self, Identity and Social Movements, ed.
Sheldon Stryker, Timothy J. Owens, and Robert W. White (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2000), 41–67; Jacqueline Adams, “The Bitter End: Emotions at a Movement’s Conclusion,” Sociological
Inquiry 73.1 (2003): 84–113; Lorraine Bayard de Volo, “The Dynamics of Emotion and Activism: Grief,
Gender, and Collective Identity in Revolutionary Nicaragua,” Mobilization 11.4 (2006): 461–74.
8
James M. Jasper, “Emotions and Social Movements: Twenty Years of Theory and Research,” Annual
Review of Sociology 37 (2011): 285–303.
9
William A. Gamson, “Constructing Social Protest,” in Social Movements and Culture, ed. Hank
Johnston and Bert Klandermans (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 85–106.
10
James M. Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); James M. Jasper, “The Emotions of Protest: Affective
and Reactive Emotions in and around Social Movements,” Sociological Forum 13.3 (1998): 397–424;
James M. Jasper, “Cultural Approaches in the Sociology of Social Movements,” in Handbook of Social
Movements across Disciplines, ed. Bert Klandermans and Conny Roggeband (New York: Springer,
2007), 59–110.
11
James M. Jasper, “Motivation and Emotion,” in Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, ed.
Robert Goodin and Charles Tilly (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 157–72.
12
Jasper, “Cultural Approaches,” 81.
13
Goodwin et al., “The Return of the Repressed,” 71.
14
See, for instance, Ron Aminzade and Doug McAdam, “Emotions and Contentious Politics,” in Silence
and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics, ed. Ron Aminzade et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge
Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal 1 (2015)
42
Secondly, the reconsideration of emotions in social movements contributed to a more
realistic understanding of mobilization mechanisms. Prior to the re-incorporation of emotions
into the scholars’ research kit, the mobilization was predominantly considered a networkeffect.15 However, a theoretical problem arose: how can movements gain support of people not
incorporated into social movement networks? In order to resolve the problem, the notion of
“moral shock” was introduced, with moral shock being understood as “an unexpected event or
piece of information [which] raises such a sense of outrage in a person that she becomes inclined
toward political action.”16 Yang used a similar concept of a critical emotional event,17 although
the denomination “moral shock” prevails in the scholarly literature. A person being exposed
to some revolting materials like pictures of tortured animals18 or violations of fundamental
international laws19 is inclined to the spontaneous creation of emotional bounds with the
affected subject and may experience vivid emotions like shame or anger that are significantly
important for mobilization.20 Hence, mobilization through moral shock is not a consequence
of network-inclusion but an effect of emotional dynamics.
Moral shocks are basic components of radicalization because sympathetic, yet rather
passive, individuals do mobilize after traumatizing events and violent emotions, especially in
cases of political extremism: “Chechen Black Widows are described as seeking revenge against
Russians for their own experience of rape or for the deaths of their menfolk. Tamil Tigers
of the suicide brigades […] are often described as survivors of Sinhalese atrocities.”21 This
model of radicalization implies that the person had already possessed some characteristics,
University Press, 2001), 14–50; Sidney G. Tarrow, Power in Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011).
15
Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Free Press, 1984); Robert V. Gould,
“Multiple Networks and Mobilization in the Paris Commune,” American Sociological Review 56.6
(1991): 716–29; Doug McAdam, and Ronnelle Paulsen, “Specifying the Relationship between Social
Ties and Activism,” American Journal of Sociology 99.3 (1993): 640–67.
16
Jasper, “The Emotions of Protest,” 409.
17
Guobin Yang, “Emotional Events and the Transformation of Collective Action,” in Emotions and Social
Movements, ed. Helena Flam and Debra King (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), 80.
18
James M. Jasper and Jane Poulsen, “Recruiting Strangers and Friends: Moral Shocks and Social
Networks in Animal Rights and Anti-Nuclear Protests,” Social Problems 42.4 (1995): 493–512.
19
Sharon Erickson Nepstad and Christian S. Smith, “The Social Structure of Moral Outrage in
Recruitment to the U. S. Central America Peace Movement,” in Passionate Politics: Emotions and
Social Movements, ed. Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2001), 158–74.
20
Hyojoung Kim, “Shame, Anger, and Love in Collective Action: Emotional Consequences of Suicide
Protest in South Korea, 1991,” Mobilization 7.2 (2002): 159–76; Martijn Van Zomeren, Russell Spears,
Agneta H. Fischer, and Collin W. Leach, “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is! Explaining Collective
Action Tendencies through Group-based Anger and Group Efficacy,” Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 87.5 (2004): 649–64.
21
Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko, “Mechanisms of Political Radicalization: Pathways toward
Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence 20.3 (2008): 418.
Ivan Gomza, Nadiia Koval. The Winter of Our Discontent: Emotions
43
and Contentious Politics in Ukraine during Euromaidan
being more sensitive to particular stimuli, more disposed to emotional reaction, and, therefore,
more prone to consequent choices. This means that moral shocks are not “suddenly imposed
grievances”22: they turn out to be (at least partially) mediated and constructed by preexisting
principles, beliefs, and affective loyalties. Thus, emotional responses and collective action built
upon them are contextually dependent variables.
The nature of this context, however, remains questionable. The hard-line structural
approach claims that “individual or collective actors engage in social, i. e., power and status,
relations with other actors, and one result of those interactions is emotion — in both
actors.”23 On the other hand, the context of emotional responses may be interpreted through
the phenomenological tradition as predefined by a hierarchy of values particular to the actor.
Nepstad and Smith introduced the notion of cognitive accessibility, implying that “the cultural
and social values connected to a group identity may infuse this information with a sense of
urgency and a compelling need to respond.”24 Either structurally or phenomenologically,
a moral shock’s context tends to be a central element of the mobilization through emotions and
requires closer attention.
Thirdly, bringing emotions back in has contributed to a better understanding of social
movement dynamics. Overtly put by Eyerman, “the force of emotion is an essential part of
what keeps a movement moving and its lack helps explain its decline.”25 Without “emotional
energy”26 the movement is unable to mobilize people and inspire them to face the adversary
with determination. Sometimes participants get bored and quit the movement,27 sometimes
they are too disillusioned and depressed to participate further,28 and sometimes they are unable
to overcome limitations of “libidinal opportunity structure.”29 On the other hand, properly used
emotions help to surmount the free-rider problem and bring satisfaction with collective action
and belonging to something bigger than an individual self.30
22
Edward J. Walsh, “Resource Mobilization and Citizen Protest in Communities around Three Mile
Island,” Social Problems 29.1 (1981): 121.
23
Theodore D. Kemper, “A Structural Approach to Social Movement Emotions,” in Passionate Politics:
Emotions and Social Movements, ed. Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta (Chicago,
Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 62.
24
Nepstad and Smith, “The Social Structure,” 166.
25
Ron Eyerman, “How Social Movements Move: Emotions and Social Movements,” in Emotions and
Social Movements, ed. Helena Flam and Debra King (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), 43.
26
Randall Collins, “Social Movements and the Focus of Emotional Attention,” in Passionate Politics:
Emotions and Social Movements, ed. Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta (Chicago,
Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 29.
27
Aristide R. Zolberg, “Moments of Madness,” Politics and Society 2 (1972): 183–207.
28
Sidney G. Tarrow, “Old Movements in New Cycles of Protest: The Career of an Italian Religious
Community,” International Social Movement Research 1 (1988): 281–304.
29
Jeff Goodwin, “The Libidinal Constitution of a High-Risk Social Movement: Affectual Ties and
Solidarity in the Huk Rebellion, 1946 to 1954,” American Sociological Review 62.1 (1997): 53–69.
30
Compare: Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest, 22–29 and Elisabeth Jean Wood, “The Emotional Benefits
of Insurgency in El Salvador,” in Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements, ed. Jeff Goodwin,
Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal 1 (2015)
44
Animated by emotions, social movements are also machines for producing new emotions.
Given that any social conflict comprehends three parties (a movement, its antagonist and
bystanders), generated emotions can also be differentiated. Participants may feel love to one
another, revulsion towards the antagonists and the whole range of emotion towards bystanders.
Flam concedes that positive emotions are shared within the collectivity, while negative emotions
are directed towards the antagonist.31 The question, however, remains: in which ways do positive
emotions shared by participants and negative emotions projected outside contribute to movement
progress and decline?
Studies of emotions in social movements have taken a substantial step forward in the last
twenty years. Still, three focal points requiring further investigations include: (1) the interaction
of emotional and cognitive elements in contentious politics; (2) the contextuality of moral
shocks; and (3) the role of emotional exchanges in movement dynamics. In following discussion,
we explore all three focal points by examining contentious politics in Ukraine from November
2013 through part of January 2014.
Methods
We found qualitative methods as the most appropriate because our goal — to examine the role
of emotions in contentious actions — was exploratory. The primary data collection method
was 60 semi-structured personal interviews with protest participants, gathered and taperecorded in the Independence Square and its surroundings.
We interviewed both permanent residents of the protest camp and citizens participating
during weekend mass-rallies. We did not detect significant differences in the emotions of the
two groups. We randomly sampled the respondents, intentionally trying to question groups
representing different sexes, ages, and social backgrounds.
We interviewed in Ukrainian or Russian, depending on interviewee’s first choice.
The questions were open-ended as we aimed to explore the participants’ motives and attitudes.
While we used an interview guide during each interview, we tried to build rapport with each
respondent. Thus, our interviews were conversational. As a result, the questions’ wording and
ordering sometimes differed. We included several probes to guide respondents to desirable
topics when they deviated from these topics.
Thus, virtually all respondents answered about the reasons for their participation;
the emotional content of the mobilization; and their feelings towards their companions,
the government, law enforcement agencies, and bystanders. The semi-structured interviews
permitted us to observe the non-verbal indicators (emotional reactions and their range) that
we considered useful for the study. We documented these indicators as field notes.
We began collecting data on 21 November 2013 and ended on 16 January 2014. After
16 January, the protest entered a more violent phase, resulting in considerable changes in
emotional and cognitive perspectives, which require a separate study. Within this period,
James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 272–73.
31
Helena Flam, “Emotional Man. Part 1: The Emotional Man and the Problem of Collective Action,”
International Sociology 5.1 (1990): 39–56.
Ivan Gomza, Nadiia Koval. The Winter of Our Discontent: Emotions
45
and Contentious Politics in Ukraine during Euromaidan
we regularly tracked the observable emotional dynamics and the protest’s emotional wave.
In addition to interviews, we collected background information from messages exchanged by
participants via social networks, leaflets and posters distributed by participants, newspapers,
and polls conducted by sociological agencies. Though this article does not reflect all of this
material, collecting it helped to formulate our hypotheses and enhance validity and reliability
of results.
Moral Shocks and Mobilization
Social and Political Contexts of Euromaidan
The presidency of Yanukovych, who was legitimately elected in 2010, was marked with numerous
contention-prone events. Altering the Constitution in order to enhance presidential powers
(September 2010), introducing highly contestable tax changes for small businesses (autumn
2010), jailing opposition leader Tymoshenko (August 2011), and changing the government
composition to favor his closest counterparts (January 2013) compose, but do not exhaust, the
long list of political and economic grievances. Still, none of these frustrations produced a largescale protest: the protests that occurred were only limited in scope and local, incomparable to
the Orange Revolution of 2004. During the Yanukovych’s rule “protests rarely gathered at least
some thousands of participants, and [the] overwhelming majority of Ukraine’s citizens were
not involved in protest activity.”32 According to a common idea, expressed by the media and
expert community, Ukrainians had grown so disappointed with the unsatisfactory results of the
Orange Revolution that large-scale, antigovernment collective actions were impossible.
The political opposition’s inability to mobilize citizens was another important factor.
Its limited influence on political life increased after the manipulated elections system gave
Yanukovych an opportunity to control the parliament in late 2012. Moreover, Yanukovych’s
adoption of the rhetoric and practices of European integration, took a key set of ideas from the
opposition, limiting them to populist appeals and excessive concentration on Tymoshenko’s
case. Yanukovych’s perceived resolution on the European integration path and the slow adoption
of EU-like legislation brought a kind of consensus to Ukrainian society. Many seemed eager to
forgive Yanukovych his excesses in exchange for an eventually successful European integration.
The months before the scheduled signing of the Association Agreement were characterized
a “Golden Age of Yanukovych era,”33 which came to a very abrupt end.
On 21 November, the government announced the postponing of the Association Agreement
signing. That evening, a few dozen people headed towards the Independence Square in Kyiv,
protesting against this U-turn. In the following days, the number of protesters grew and a few
universities declared a strike. The repertoire of this contention copied the successful repertoire
32
Volodymyr Ishchenko, ed., Protesty, peremohy i represii v Ukraini: resultaty monitorynhu 2011 [Protests,
Victories, and Repressions: Monitoring Results of 2011] (Kyiv: Tsentr doslidzhennia suspilstva, 2012), 71.
33
Oleksandr Sushko, “Vilniuskyi Rubikon : Kinets ‘Zolotoho Viku’ Yanukovycha,” [“Rubicon at Vilnius:
The End of Yanukovych’s ‘Golden Age’,”] accessed February 10, 2014, http://blogs.korrespondent.net/
celebrities/blog/sasha5/a124360.
Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal 1 (2015)
46
of 2004: the most active demonstrators left their desks, occupied the Independence Square,
holding the ground days and nights, while others joined them after labor hours.
On the night of November 30, riot police known in Ukraine as Berkut, attacked the
encampment at the Independence Square and brutally beat the people, predominantly students,
there. This outraged many citizens. On the first Sunday after the Berkut assault (1 December), an
immense mass rally, uniting hundreds of thousands of participants, took place in Kyiv. Some of
the participants occupied the city council building. Some, at this stage labeled as “provocateurs,”
tried to attack police cordons with grinder, chains and stones. More and more protesters arrived
from the regions, enlarging the encampment at the Independence Square. After the next Sunday
rally of 8 December, protesters, anticipating a new Berkut assault, started building barricades
around the camp and organized self-defense units. The Berkut tried to remove barricades on the
night of 11 December but drew back. Although the demonstrators put a new claim — to punish
those who had planned and realized the brutality of 30 November — the regime preferred to
wait until the people’s fury evaporated. Despite all the calculations, the protest persisted.
Finally, the hard-liners within the ruling élites made a faux pas. On 16 January 2014, the
Parliament passed harsh anti-protest acts through tremendous procedural violations, after
which, a significant part of the protesters, persuaded of the futility of negotiations, adopted
violent tactics. Hereafter, we limit our analysis to emotional content of the non-violent phase
of the protest.
Two Moral Shocks
Given the underdevelopment of political parties’ and social movements’ networks in Ukraine,
we argue that the contentious politics in November-December 2013 was enabled by emotions.
Sociological data illustrates the shortcomings of the network paradigm in Euromaidan case:
92% of mass rallies participants did not belong to any political party or SMO. Moreover,
describing the reasons of their mobilization, people referred to Yanukovych’s refusal to sign the
Association Agreement (53.5%), the cruel beating of demonstrators on November 30 (70%),
and their general discontent, manifested in a belief in the need to change those in power (39%).
Only 5–7% of people came to the Square because of the call of the opposition.34 Our empirical
data corroborates the pattern: an absolute majority cited the refusal to sign the Association
Agreement, the Berkut’s brutality or both events as the reason for their protest, only 2 persons
referred to peer-pressure or a friend’s invitation. This does not preclude the presence of social
networks where ideas and resources were exchanged; rather, participation in these networks
was insufficient for mobilization.
We distinguish the first (refusal-motivated) and the second (brutality-motivated) waves of
mobilization. In this section, we argue that although participants in both waves experienced vivid
emotions, these emotions differed significantly in their content. By examining and comparing
two emotional contents we intend to prove that (1) both the refusal to sign the Association
34
“Maidan-2013: Khto stoit, chomu i za shcho?” [“Maidan-2013: Who is Standing, Why, and for What?”]
The Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation, accessed March 19, 2014, http://www.dif.org.ua/
ua/polls/2013-year/mogjorjghoeoj.htm.
Ivan Gomza, Nadiia Koval. The Winter of Our Discontent: Emotions
47
and Contentious Politics in Ukraine during Euromaidan
Agreement and the Berkut’s brutality caused moral shocks responsible for mobilization;
(2) these shocks varied in their scale and scope; (3) and those differences were contextually
dependent.
According to their responses, the first-wavers were the individuals who found the decision
of the president to be arbitrary; they felt indignation, disappointment, and resentment; they
believed that they were betrayed and demanded their opinion to be respected. Most of all, people
were outraged by the suddenness of the reversal in public policy. The pro-European policy was
planned and implemented over years but reversed in a week. The reaction of disbelief should be
interpreted as a moral shock: there was an unexpected event that disturbed people emotionally
and disposed them towards contentious politics. Initially, the response was neither planned nor
well-coordinated: some outraged individuals responded to a journalist’s spontaneous call to
demonstrate distributed via Facebook. Later, the political opposition realized the opportunity
and managed to organize a mass rally. Still, a driving force of this manifestation was the
collective emotional élan of discontent over an “abduction of Europe,” as it was later cleverly
characterized.
The second group of demonstrators was mobilized a week later by a frequent source of
moral shock — police brutality.35 The second-wavers were individuals stunned and enraged
by the Berkut’s actions. People could not believe this had happened. Then, facing the evidence,
they experienced anger, fury, and hate. Their responses were overtly emotional. An old man
explained with overwhelming bitterness: “One cannot beat livestock the way the Berkut have
beaten up human beings. It is never to be excused and it brought us here.”36 Other respondents
were even more fulminating: “God, they [the Berkut] have not simply forced the people out,
they openly beat the children! When I saw it on the TV, my whole soul started shaking. I felt ire,
inexpressible wrath! I had to come, I felt I had to, otherwise they will beat us up at every turn.”37
The Berkut’s brutality provoked emotional reactions much stronger in scale and scope
than the refusal to sign the Association Agreement. Increases in scale meant that people
began to interpret the situation more emotionally and experienced it more intensely. Some,
predominantly women, confessed they wept bitterly as if they, themselves, had been bodily
harmed by the Berkut; others were outraged by the lawlessness of the state and law enforcement
agencies. They experienced disgust at the government and the president and even expressed
the desire to get rid of both immediately. Thus, emotional content of the second wave evolved
significantly.
The emotional content evolved into dramatic accounts, such as unverified reports about
a young girl killed by the Berkut on 30 November, the government bringing armored personnel
carriers and tanks closer to Kyiv, Russian Special Forces landing in Ukraine, and speculation
about an imminent storming of the encampment or the declaration of a state of emergency.
While the greater part of such information proved to be false, its circulation revealed the high
level of emotional tension and the shared conviction that the regime was acting brutally and
35
David Hess and Brian Martin, “Repression, Backfire, and the Theory of Transformative Events,”
Mobilization 11.2 (2006): 249–67.
36
Interview № 12, December 8, 2013.
37
Interview № 2, December 8, 2013.
Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal 1 (2015)
48
could act at anytime. It explains the sense of insecurity experienced by virtually all of the
respondents, a sense that was “especially acute in nighttime.”38 This shared sense of insecurity
led to the demonstrators erecting barricades and organizing special patrol units to guard these
barricades after dark.
The growth in the scope of emotional reactions socially diffused responses to the events and
eventually diffused participation in the protests. This social diffusion had two forms: individual
and sector. Individual social diffusion means that individuals who had never considered even
a slightest possibility of contentious actions entered the protest movement after experiencing
strong emotional reactions. One participant’s response provides a telling example of the
mechanism: “Frankly, I do not care if we should be closer to Russia or to the EU. The politics, I do
not understand it much. But it hurts that children were beaten up. Before, I had no intention
to come here, now I have come and brought 9 more people with my minivan. I really wanted
to come, and I was driven by unnatural anger, I dreamed about tearing into pieces those, who
had given the order.”39 Another person explains: “Generally I am not interested in politics […]
but these days I went in the streets in order to protect our children and our future.”40 These
examples prove that emotional reactions, expressed either in the form of pure compassion for
the innocent or as metaphorical leveling (“those beaten children are like mine”), reflect strong
empathic bounds that converted bystanders into demonstrators. This mechanism of emotional
mobilization is typical of a moral shock.
Sector social diffusion means that new segments of society were mobilized. Sociological
studies of a mass rally on 8 December 2013 in Kyiv’s city center reported over 500,000 participants
representing different social strata and occupations. There were specialists (39.5%), students
(13.2%), pensioners (9.4%), businesspersons (9.3%), managers (8%), and workers (6.7%).41
Such a mixed social structure differed from that of the first-wave (who were predominantly
students and middle-class members) and showed that the sector diffusion, discussed by
Tarrow,42 depends, among other, on emotional components.
Comparing the emotional content of both moral shocks, we found that emotional reactions
to the Berkut’s brutality were more primitive. First-wavers experienced highly intellectual
reactions like offence, the indignation of citizens ignored by their government, or insult provoked
by the lies of politicians. They were upset by the abruptly alternated “strategy of development
of the country and the visions of its future.”43 On the other hand, second-wavers were animated
by more visceral feelings of disgust, anger, wrath, and fury. Although the sentiments of the first-
38
Interview № 4, December 4, 2013.
39
Interview № 1, December 4, 2013.
40
Interview № 14, December 8, 2013.
41
“Maidan-Mitynh i Maidan-Tabir: Skhozhe i vidminne,” [“Maidan as a Mass-Rally and Maidan as a
Camp: Similarities and Distinctions,”] The Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation, accessed
March 19, 2014, http://www.dif.org.ua/ua/polls/2013-year/vjweojgvowerjoujgo.htm.
42
Sidney G. Tarrow, “Cycles of Collective Action: Between Moments of Madness and the Repertoire of
Contention,” Social Science History 17.2 (1993): 284–86.
43
Interview № 11, December 8, 2013.
Ivan Gomza, Nadiia Koval. The Winter of Our Discontent: Emotions
49
and Contentious Politics in Ukraine during Euromaidan
wavers were considerably closer to “moral emotions,”44 our argumentation is concurrent to
that of Jasper. Being more primitive, the reflex-emotions were more effective as mobilizational
stimuli, appealing not to people’s convictions but to their empathy.
It is significant that many second-wavers were not able to precisely define their emotions
and answered by describing their feelings. Still, they were confident while explaining the
reasons they felt that way. It means that though emotionally disturbed, these participants
were perfectly certain about the source of the disturbance. We argue that the combination of
violent semi-conscientious emotions and clear understanding of the stimuli of these emotions
is a mechanism of mobilization through a moral shock.
Emotional Path Dependence
If moral shock was crucial for the mobilization and diffusion of contention, why did only
some individuals experience it? Why did not every Ukrainian citizen demonstrate his or
her discontent? We argue that each event prone to provoke a moral shock resonates with an
individual’s political preferences, moral principles, social milieu values, and temperamental or
psychological characteristics. Those elements compose a structure transmitting information
about current events. As this structure filters information, individuals interpret it and react to
it. We define the impact of this process as emotional path dependence.
Why did first-wavers experience moral shock, while the majority of their compatriots
remained passive? Describing their emotions, first-wavers demonstrated a firm belief that
adopting European norms and democratic values should change Ukraine for better. One
participant stated: “I strongly support the event, which cherishes my hope that Ukraine
will become a democratic state that respects human rights.”45 Others were upset with the
government’s lack of transparency and accountability or with its arbitrary behavior. These
negatively resonated with the commitment to democratic values of the to-be-participants and
laid the foundation of the emotional path dependence. Such a commitment explains why firstwaivers mostly represented a relatively small social sector of enthusiastic students or middleclass members. After all, democratic values are poorly implanted in large societal groups
in Ukraine.
The moral shock caused by the Berkut’s brutality was much more resonant. Describing
their emotions, respondents spoke about their astonishment. One of them, highlighting the
perceived abnormality of the Berkut’s brutality, stated: “they acted as if possessed by an evil
spirit.”46 A plausible explanation of this bewilderment resides in Ukraine’s historical experience:
Ukrainians have rarely experienced brutal clashes with police, and, assuming that the police
would not be brutal this time, people were prepared to respond with indifference. Yet, when
they saw what had happened, their astonishment rapidly transformed into outrage. Arguably,
in societies with a long and continuous tradition of governmental repression, police brutality
has little resonance: it is less likely to provoke a moral shock when compared to societies
44
Jasper, “Motivation and Emotion,” 161.
45
Interview № 30, December 11, 2013.
46
Interview № 13, December 8, 2013.
Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal 1 (2015)
50
without such experience. This suggests that the nature of moral shock is historically and
culturally embedded.
Moreover, due to the Berkut’s brutality, the image of “abduction of Europe” was substituted
with a more bleak “Slaughter of the Innocents.” Many respondents gave a strikingly similar
explanation of the motive of their participation: they referred to the fact that “the children were
beat up,” even though most of the victims of the 30 November beatings were adults. Moreover, the
answer was articulated not only by elderly people, but also by respondents in their twenties —
those who actually belonged in the same “child-age” category. The replication of the image and
wording provoked more empathy and moved more people into protest movement. A senior
lady told us: “Despite low wages I was paid, despite lie and humiliation I lived in, I accepted the
situation. But I cannot tolerate the fact that they had acted so cruelly towards our dear youth.”47
Another respondent uttered: “Those bastards, they are beating up our children! Most of us felt:
something must be done in our country, but everyone, including myself, just waited. Well, here
it is: they rounded up the students and that made me go in the street.”48 The shock from the
Berkut’s brutality overlapped with the critical reception of the refusal to sign the Association
Agreement, which made many respondents define both events as central for their mobilization:
“I was not really affected by the question of European integration. Yes, I came, spent some time
on Independence Square and went away. But then the students were beaten, and later there was
that bloody battle at Bankova street. During both events plenty of people suffered, and I faced
the cynical and violent nature of the regime, which left me no choice but to protest.”49
Anger, fury, rage, and indignation were the most common emotions, but even experienced
and described as sudden outbursts, they were not spontaneous. We found that at the bedrock of
vivid emotional reaction was a critical reception of the Yanukovych regime. Many respondents
willingly emphasized that they had been active during the Orange Revolution, and that since
that time they permanently experienced negative emotions towards Yanukovych and his
cronies. The people considered the regime ineffective, politically closed, and fraudulent. They
disapproved of the regime before, but their frail emotions contributed insignificantly to a fullscale mobilization. The moral shocks resonated with their negative attitude to the political
regime, and, with that attitude now amplified, mobilized them.
The correlation between moral shock and preexisting experience was also observed in
other case studies, e. g., the animal-rights50 and the U. S. Central America Peace Movement51
recruitments. In the Ukrainian case, the claim that moral shock is emotionally path dependent
is confirmed not only by positive mobilization cases, but also by negative ones. People who
openly supported the regime experienced no outrage due to the police brutality and approved
it as being lawful and necessary.52 The moral shock caused by police brutality is thus not
a universal moral reaction; on the contrary, it is a component of emotional path dependence.
47
Interview № 38, December 13, 2013.
48
Interview № 5, December 4, 2013.
49
Interview № 41, December 13, 2013.
50
Jasper and Poulsen, “Recruiting Strangers and Friends,” 503–05.
51
Nepstad and Smith, “The Social Structure,” 174.
52
Maksym Yakovlev, “Maidan i antimaidan v sotsialnykh setiakh: Kharakteristiki interpretatsionnykh
ramok,” [“Maidan and Antimaidan in Social Networks: Some Features of Interpretational Frames,”]
Ivan Gomza, Nadiia Koval. The Winter of Our Discontent: Emotions
51
and Contentious Politics in Ukraine during Euromaidan
Moral shocks are composite: negative emotions were built on some knowledge about
Yanukovych regime and they were amplified by new information about regime’s actions. This
is a part of a “knowledge → emotion” mechanism. Simultaneously, emotions shape the cognitive
functions: people mobilized by the Berkut’s brutality interpreted negatively new information
about regime policy. For instance, despite the sad state of Ukrainian economy, they blamed
Yanukovych for visiting China with an economic agenda (17 December) and obtaining a loan
from Russia. Thus, their cognitive horizons were framed by their emotional state, which is a
part of “emotion → knowledge” mechanism. We argue that both mechanisms are prerequisite
for a moral shock: emotions reinforce negative cognitive interpretations, while information
perceived in a particular way reinforces emotional disturbance.
Collective Identity and “We”-widening
Moral shock as a vivid cognitive-emotional reaction contributes considerably to a spontaneous
mobilization. However, being transient, it is unable to sustain collective action. This function is
realized through emotional exchanges resulting in creating group identities. In this section, we
survey the emotional part of creating an imagined community of protesters through emotional
exchanges with (1) the companions, (2) the antagonists, represented by the government and
the police forces, and (3) the observers, represented by the passive bystanders. We will show
that those emotional exchanges supplement the cognitive and emotional components with the
third perquisite of durable mobilization through moral shock–morality.
The Brotherhood of the Virtuous: Emotions towards Companions
Because Euromaidan participants represented different regions, occupations, and cultural
backgrounds, we identify the protest collective identity as detached, following Tilly’s distinction
between embedded and detached identities.53 We argue that, absent in routine social interaction,
the detached collective identity requires a remarkable emotional input from all the participants.
The emotionally charged environment within the Euromaidan confirms our hypothesis.
Unsurprisingly, feelings towards companions were extremely positive, be it admiration
and respect,54 “warmth”55 or “love”56 towards the protest community. Experiencing powerful
positive emotions, some individuals acquired personal confidence: they regained their “faith
Forum noveishei vostochnoevropeiskoi istorii i kultury 10.2 (2013): 74–83.
53
Charles Tilly, Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650–2000
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 59.
54
Interview № 2, December 8, 2013; Interview № 42, December 16, 2013;
Interview № 50, December 12, 2013.
55
Interview № 26, December 11, 2013; Interview № 28, December 11, 2013;
Interview № 52, December 20, 2013.
56
Interview № 17, December 10, 2013; Interview № 26, December 11, 2013;
Interview № 42, December 16, 2013; Interview № 48, December 20, 2013.
Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal 1 (2015)
52
in the future”57 and belief in their own “ability to make something joyful and life-asserting.”58
Participants linked their positive emotions to their companions standing by their side, being
overwhelmed with massive feeling of gratitude, which redoubled their own desire to help.
A young man put this explicitly: “I feel that many people are much better than me and this
makes me to do everything I can to help those people.”59
Intense positive emotions contributed significantly to destroying social boundaries and
bridging social space. A woman in an expensive coat, surrounded by dirty-looking men, stated
that she had not seen anyone who would have irritated her,60 which would be uncommon in
other cases of social interaction. Positive emotions towards unknown, often dissimilar persons,
significantly contributed to each individual’s participation. The desire to feel unity with others
brought people to the Independence Square repeatedly, which was directly stated by an older
woman: “I like being here so much that I do not want to return home.”61
As a result, feelings of sympathy, solidarity and unity dominated in our sample set. People
felt “being among their own nation”62 and believed that the participants were “united not only
physically, but mentally.”63 The intense feeling of unity evolved to a feeling of true kinship, most
often described in terms of “brotherhood.” Lasting positive emotions towards the brothersparticipants contributed to delight in collective action: “I have never had such a stormy
emotional experience — here everything is heated up by the atmosphere. People started to
reach out for one another, and this makes me happy.”64
Contributing to the creation of collective identity, emotions were intersected with
cognitive factors. People felt happiness because they believed that Euromaidan proved their
political convictions to be true. Many respondents said that collective action proved the
prevalence of patriotism among Ukrainians, trying to conceptualize what was happening in
the terms of the nation-building. For instance, an 18-year-old girl declared herself to be “seized
by joy, because we have proven, that we are the Ukrainian nation, we are united, the East and
the West.”65 Another respondent explained: “I am proud of our nation. I feel pity for those who
are cold here, but we all together defend the most precious what we have — our freedom,
our state, our future.”66 Many respondents also considered the Euromaidan a cradle of civic
society; an example of unprecedented civic self-organization that would one day become the
foundation for rebuilding the corrupted state from the scratches. People expressed pride for
such an unexpected civic awakening and rationally grounded their desire to support it.
57
Interview № 55, December 21, 2013.
58
Interview № 22, December 10, 2013.
59
Interview № 36, December 12, 2013.
60
Interview № 10, December 8, 2013.
61
Interview № 38, December 13, 2013.
62
Interview № 27, December 11, 2013.
63
Interview № 37, December 13, 2013.
64
Interview № 6, December 4, 2013.
65
Interview № 7, December 4, 2013.
66
Interview № 50, December 20, 2013.
Ivan Gomza, Nadiia Koval. The Winter of Our Discontent: Emotions
53
and Contentious Politics in Ukraine during Euromaidan
Given the emotionally and cognitively recognized importance of the Euromaidan, people
eulogized the collective action as well as its participants:
I am proud of my people, of their ability to self-organize, to assert their own
righteousness. The entire world is watching us today and apprentices this with us.
Similar actions will take place all around the world, and that is why they, in Russia
and Belarus, are so afraid of us. I feel that history is being made here. Every evening
on the Independence Square I feel that everyone who comes here tears down the
mask of tiredness, contempt, disappointment, paralysis of the will — and revives
his or her mind.67
Such pompous self-laudations are extreme manifestations of the collective identity, constructed
upon the confidence in the righteousness of the cause. The people in Independence Square
had no doubt that they were acting according to pure moral requirements. Positive emotions
experienced towards companions were a form of appreciation of the common case. Admiration,
respect, love, solidarity, and gratitude destroyed the social boundaries between the participants,
simultaneously erecting a new boundary between “us” and “them.” Moreover, considering the
collective action to be the purest stockpile of civic virtues, demonstrators started viewing
protest participation as a moral obligation of every citizen.
Attributing morality to their actions, participants stepped forward in sustaining contentious
action. A moral shock is an individual reaction to some repulsive event. Neither its emotional
nor its cognitive component fulfill the requirement of universality: both are too immersed in
a private universe of beliefs and values. Moreover, emotions are often treated as “irrational”;
thus, people find it both difficult and useless to ground their claims by emotions. But resorting
to morality makes any claims virtually universal and perfectly legitimate. Besides, it produces
a particular emotional exchange with the broader public: those who ignore or impede it are
described as immoral persons. The attitude and sentiments towards the antagonist are revealing
in this respect.
Emotions towards the Antagonist: Constructing the Enemy, Wiping out the Ambiguity
Two moral shocks produced two types of antagonists: the government (including the
president) and the police. The nature of the first moral shock made the contentious politics
anti-governmental ab initio. Additionally, the majority of second-wavers blamed and rejected
the “criminal regime that gave orders to beat children.”68 Some respondents simply stated
that government’s “time to quit has come”69 or “we need to take rubbish out of the house.”70
Other respondents exposed anger, distrust, and indignation. In both cases, the government was
67
Interview № 33, December 12, 2013.
68
Interview № 3, December 4, 2013.
69
Interview № 4, December 4, 2013.
70
Interview № 5, December 4, 2013.
Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal 1 (2015)
54
considered an illegitimate political actor, “a mob of bandits”71 making “the state to live according
to the rules of thieves.”72
The personality of the president stirred up an even less dissimulated feeling of discontent.
For the participants he was the avatar of everything bad that was happening in Ukraine. The
range of negative reactions was very wide: people spoke of contempt, disgust, disappointment,
hate, shame, disdain, distrust, disrespect. Respondents were quite creative in inventing
aggressive and degrading characteristics: “corrupt cattle,”73 “paltry fellow,”74 “backboneless,
brainless puppet,”75 “monster of cruelty,”76 “thief that cannot connect two words together”77 or
“a piece of shit that considers itself to be a bullet.”78 The common idea was that the current
president was so corrupt and immoral that he should quit his post in any way possible: some
respondents openly wished his death. Thus, the emotional and moral boundary between “us”
(good and law-abiding citizens) and “them” (the gang of criminals encroaching political power)
reinforced the collective identity of protest participants.
This boundary, however, tended to be more transparent when the respondents described
their feelings toward law-enforcement agencies. On the one hand, the Berkut’s brutality was the
main reason of the second moral shock and, consequently, it provoked negative, strong, and
simple feelings: rage, fury, and hate. Some treated the Berkut’s brutality as an act incompatible
with officer’s honor or even as the personal offence: an old man claimed that “they have
trampled on my feelings.”79 Moreover, the imagery of the “Slaughter of Innocents” complicated
the emotional content, branding the Berkut as an actor who violated the basic societal rule
and became morally unacceptable. For this reason, respondents also experienced complicated
moral emotions of indignation, contempt, disgust, offence, and disappointment. Associating
the Berkut with absolute evil also involved dehumanization: respondents were constantly
underlining the inadequateness of the troops, i. e. bestiality, inhuman cruelty, “ungrounded
desire of aggression lurking in their red eyes.”80 Such an emotional content provoked willingness
to eradicate the unit — either institutionally, as “a criminal organization that has to be
disbanded”81 or even physically: one respondent urged that “we need to castrate them, because
they must not procreate”82 and another called for “burn[ing] the crap.”83
71
Interview № 30, December 11, 2013.
72
Interview № 19, December 10, 2013.
73
Interview № 2, December 4, 2013.
74
Interview № 6, December 4, 2013.
75
Interview № 30, December 11, 2013.
76
Interview № 38, December 13, 2013.
77
Interview № 44, December 19, 2013.
78
Interview № 22, December 10, 2013.
79
Interview № 20, December 10, 2013.
80
Interview № 8, December 6, 2013.
81
Interview № 54, December 21, 2013.
82
Interview № 57, December 24, 2013.
83
Interview № 5, December 4, 2013.
Ivan Gomza, Nadiia Koval. The Winter of Our Discontent: Emotions
55
and Contentious Politics in Ukraine during Euromaidan
On the other hand, a significant number of respondents confessed their emotional
ambiguity towards the law-enforcement agencies. Though blaming the Berkut for its cruelty,
they placed responsibility for the brutality on the regime, speaking of police officers as “also
defenseless against our state, represented by the president.”84 Consequently, people explained
the actions of the Berkut with the obligation to obey the orders — they felt some pity,
understanding that the police were acting under pressure and risked losing their job in case of
disobedience, treating them as the hostages of their profession.
An even more pronounced pattern of ambiguity was observed in emotional reactions to
the regular police. Most reactions were negative, consisting of disgust, contempt, disrespect,
caution, and shame. Still, the hate was not as violent as in the case of the Berkut. Many
respondents shared the view that not all the people wearing uniforms were villains. They treated
the police with compassion and pity, trying to find some commonality between them and the
protesters: “they are used as cannon fodder,”85 “they stand here against their own free will and
protect things they do not like themselves,”86 “they obey to the orders of the government, but
probably they are the same people as we are.”87
This ambiguity reached its apogee when the “beaten children” imagery found its
unexpected reflection in the relation to the 17- to 19-year-old conscripts of the Interior Troops
serving as the first row of a human shield posted around governmental buildings. The image of
unarmed, defenseless “children” of the Interior Troops suffering through several hours of angry
attacks with a grinder, chains and stones during the storming of the Presidential Administration
on 1 December (while armed Berkut stayed in the rear), further blurred the frontier between
“us” and “them.” And, for a short period, this even called into question the sense of moral
righteousness experienced by our informants. The radicals beating these “children” were initially
called “provocateurs,” although the final responsibility for covering with “children” was placed
on the government. One respondent fulminated: “They made those children keep the defense
in the cold, stand in the frost! God, that’s insane! That’s an atrocity: you cannot call those who
put the guys to stand in the frost humans!”88
We believe that ambivalent emotional reaction towards law-enforcement agencies reflects
the dynamics of contentious politics. Protest participants considered themselves as people
acting according to the law: they went into the streets because the government has ignored
the wishes of citizens and used force against a non-violent mass rally. It was the government
and the president themselves who acted unlawfully and who, according to widespread opinion,
represented criminal elements. Therefore, people initially considered law-enforcement agencies
as a potential ally that could help during the confrontation with non-law-abiding actors. Some
respondents expressed the hope that “at least one detachment commander will order his
men to defend the people with their shields,”89 because police “should stand by the side of
84
Interview № 37, December 13, 2013.
85
Interview № 5, December 4, 2013.
86
Interview № 8, December 6, 2013.
87
Interview № 50, December 20, 2013.
88
Interview № 38, December 13, 2013.
89
Interview № 37, December 13, 2013.
Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal 1 (2015)
56
the ordinary people, not on the side of the convict.”90 The sentiments of pity and compassion
towards the police communicated the willingness of our informants to accept the antagonist
as potential “us.” For this reason, the boundary cutting “the police” and “the people” remained
transparent for some time. In this first phase, the practice of feeding the police or bringing them
hot beverages was quite widespread.
Still, as with the course of contentious politics law-enforcement agencies continued to be
loyal to the regime, and as the hopes of police allying with the people vanished, the differences
between good and bad police, between the police as a whole and the government, blurred.
As the conflict went on and the government became more and more delegitimized in the eyes
of protesters, the emotions towards both became more and more coherent: the police were
simple defenders of “the Gang” against whom the use of the stones and Molotov cocktails
became fully acceptable.
Bystanders between Rejection and Tutelage
The silent majority of bystanders occupied much of the imagination of our respondents, who not
only reported their emotional relations, but also tried to classify the bystanders and invent some
mechanisms of involving them in the protest. Though some respondents professed respect of a
different point of view, generally the relation to the bystanders was far less detached. Perceiving
Euromaidan as the fight between the moral and the unmoral, participants were eager to fight
for souls of those who did not join their ranks.
Numerous respondents expressed their hope that there were many supporters who could
not join the protests because of problems at the workplace, their desire not to close their
business, or family problems. These were considered as a rear, helping the protest in other ways,
e. g., by sending money, or as a reserve that would surely join later. Sometimes those bystanders
who expressed verbal support but refrained from active participation were considered cowards
(as one man put it metaphorically: “I would not share a foxhole with such people”91) or as infused
with “passivity and philistinism.”92 Nevertheless, the hope to widen the protest base persisted.
At the same time, a conscious passive or spectator position met extreme disapproval; many
respondents signalized surprise, incomprehension and offence about it. Given that participants
considered themselves righteous citizens protecting their rights and the fact that they often
thought about contentious actions as a moral obligation, it was unbelievable and inadmissible
to them that others could ignore the Euromaidan. Respondents confessed “feeling rage toward
those who are indifferent to us”93 and “being irritated by people who live in shit and cherish
this shit.”94
We argue that negative emotions experienced towards bystanders were a consequence
of collective identity formation that erected a boundary between the “virtuous us” and the
90
Interview № 9, December 6, 2013.
91
Interview № 4, December 4, 2013.
92
Interview № 31, December 11, 2013.
93
Interview № 6, December 4, 2013.
94
Interview № 25, December 10, 2013.
Ivan Gomza, Nadiia Koval. The Winter of Our Discontent: Emotions
57
and Contentious Politics in Ukraine during Euromaidan
“wicked them.” This was the same emotional mechanism that contrasted protest participants
and governmental élites and helped to sustain emotional tonus of contentious actors.
Bystanders were often blamed for moral inferiority that was reflected in many degrading
personal characterizations like “spineless, lacking in character and not deserving to live in a
better country,”95 “amoebae who do not want to influence their fate,”96 “a category with the slave
world-view”97 or even “an empty place in society.”98
On the other hand, unlike élites, the bystanders were not rejected completely. There was
a hope that one day they might join the contentious collective action. Therefore, the identity
boundary did not cut off bystanders; it just highlighted their “otherness.” In this respect, the
attitude towards them was similar to those towards the police, but with a significant difference:
the police were considered a powerful and autonomous actor that could become an ally. Thus,
protesters felt a mix of fear and respect, distrust and expectation. Bystanders, on the other hand,
were viewed as dependent and weak persons, unable to act unassisted and incapable of clear
judgments, and as minors assisting an important event without fully realizing its significance.
This explains why bystanders were constantly blamed for not knowing and not
understanding the history, the seriousness of the situation, and the consequences of the events.
They were also depicted as individuals without will and readiness to struggle, as victims of the
false information circulating in the media. As one of the respondents put it, “I think that part of
these people has just lost hope that it is still possible to change something in our country. And
another part — probably due to lack of information — has a distorted image of everything
that is happening. But both parts are united in desiring the dismissal of the government.”99
This idea that people do not understand because they are misinformed added an important
emotional component, i. e., a desire to proselytize and enlighten. According to a common
opinion, “if we want changes, we should work with people — teach them, explain, enhance
the level of culture, morals, and inculcate the correct values.”100
Metaphorically, the protestors perceived themselves as adult citizens who approached the
infantile population with a readiness to help and to guide. This perception clarifies the correlation
between emotional, cognitive, and moral components of contentious politics. A collective
identity is necessary for a durable collective action. It is built upon shared positive emotions
and common cognitive perspectives, bonded by universalistic morality, which produces a selfimage of “righteous Us.” Given the centrality of the moral component, contentious actors excuse
emotional and cognitive failings more easily than moral ones: bystanders and the police may
be unaware of political situation (cognitive failure) or too frightened to participate (emotional
failure), yet still remain a potential ally. Once they turn to be corrupted or indifferent to
communal future (moral failure), they step beyond the imaginary boundary of “Us.”
95
Interview № 21, December 10, 2013.
96
Interview № 3, December 4, 2013.
97
Interview № 5, December 4, 2013.
98
Interview № 37, December 13, 2013.
99
Interview № 52, December 20, 2013.
100 Interview № 56, December 23, 2013.
Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal 1 (2015)
58
Conclusions
Our intention is to enhance our understanding of the role of emotions in contentious mobilization
and protest sustaining. Studying emotions in the first phase of Ukrainian Euromaidan protest,
we found overwhelming support for emotion-centered approach to contentious politics.
First, the rapid mobilization of Ukrainian citizens in late 2013 was enabled by the
overlapping of two successive moral shocks — the one provoked by the government’s
refusal to sign the Association Agreement and the second by police brutality. According to
our interpretation, the emotional content of the second moral shock, being more primitive,
contributed to broader social diffusion of discontent. We also suggest that different emotional
reactions were determined by emotional path dependence — the impact of culture and
values upon the interpretation of current political events. According to our data, people rarely
experienced spontaneous negative emotions towards the regime; rather, those previously
existing beliefs, attitudes, and loyalties were amplified by one or both moral shocks. Thus, moral
shock is contextually dependent phenomenon.
Second, our findings confirm current trend in the scholarship, proving that emotions
and cognition are intertwined. We provide additional arguments to that opinion, showing that
a moral shock is a constellation of emotional reactions with cognitive work: it happens only if
emotions reinforce negative interpretations of some social or political event, while information
perceived in a particular way reinforces emotional disturbance.
Third, our data corroborates the hypothesis that emotions are important mechanisms of
collective identity construction as a way to sustain the protest. We find that actors involved
in contentious politics coalesce through enhanced positive emotions, creating the image of
a unity. To put the boundaries between “collective Us” and the antagonist as well as bystanders,
the self-image as a moral actor is crucial. The morality is instrumental, because resorting to
morality makes contentious claims quasi-universal and legitimate. The perceived universality of
contentious claims and the feeling of moral righteousness serve to recruit new allies by making
the bystanders’ position unacceptable. In other words, the dual emotional-cognitive nature
of mobilization through moral shock needs a supplement of moral component in order to be
stable and durable. The morality became central for contentious action. Emotional exchanges
with antagonists and bystanders prove that contentious actors excuse emotional and cognitive
failings more easily than moral ones.
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3
Ivan Gomza, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the National University of KyivMohyla Academy. His scholarly interests include contentious politics with special focus on the
strategies of contention within authoritarian regimes. His recent publications are: “The Elusive
Proteus: A Study in Ideological Morphology of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists”
(Journal of Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 2015, in English), “Contentious Politics and
Repertoire of Contention in Ukraine: The Case of Euromaidan” (Mahisterium: Politychni studii,
2014, in English); “Catalytic Mobilization of Radical Ukrainian Nationalists in the Second Polish
Republic: The Impact of Political Opportunity Structure” (Ukraina Moderna, 2013, in Ukrainian);
“Multi-Sectoral Classification of Authoritarian Regimes” (Naukovi zapysky NaUKMA, 2014, in
Ukrainian).
Nadiia Koval is a political analyst at the National Institute for Strategic Studies in Kyiv and
pursues a PhD thesis devoted to comparative analysis of reconciliation politics between GreeceTurkey and Ukraine-Poland at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations in
Paris. Her research interests revolve around reconciliation politics both in its international and
interstate dimensions, with a special emphasis on identity building and the uses of historical
memory in the process. Her latest articles are: “The School History Textbook for the Balkans:
From Pedagogical Innovation to Political Reality” (Ukraina Moderna, 2012, in Ukrainian);
“L’Europe centrale dans la cartographie mentale des intellectuels ukrainiens d’aujourd’hui”
(Anatoli, 2011, in French); “Balkan Identity in Cultural Diplomacy of the Hellenic Foundation
for Culture in the Balkans” (Hileia: Naukovyi visnyk, 2010, in Ukrainian).