When Kristina Berdinskikh, a former journalist with Korrespondent magazine, wrote a Facebook post about a group of medical volunteers she met at EuroMaidan in Kyiv on Dec. 1, she couldn’t have guessed how deeply involved she would eventually become.
Two months later, she runs Maidaners, a project uniting several popular Facebook pages with more than 70 stories featuring protesters.
“I didn’t expect people to tell me their names. I knew how dangerous it might be for them, and I was surprised when public figures, businessmen spoke openly,” Berdinskikh says.
When the page gained thousands of followers, Berdinskikh called for volunteers to translate her stories from Ukrainian to other languages. In just several days, 173 people volunteered to translate.
With their help, it took the journalist about a week to launch 12 pages with protesters’ personal stories told in English, Russian, German, Italian and other languages. The English page, launched on Jan. 29, already has more than 1,100 subscribers.
The original page in Ukrainian was launched on Dec. 20, and since then each protester’s story posted by Berdinskikh gets at least 10,000 views. The story of Polish journalist Bartek Maslyankevych and a protester who dragged him away from the fighting is the most popular so far, having been read by more than 100,000 people.
“It’s not that I’m trying to attract huge audience and thousands of subscribers, but it shows that people are interested in this project. EuroMaidan gathered different individuals for a common reason,” Berdinskikh says.
Protesters interviewed by Berdinskikh came from all over Ukraine. Some, like Stockholm resident Oleg Bruunojev, arrived from abroad. Bruunojev, who once lived in Kyiv, left his job as industrial designer once he found out about the protests in Ukraine. Here, the designer turned into cook, helping at one of the EuroMaidan’s kitchen.
The story about Serhiy Nigoyan, one of three protesters killed by gunfire when police attacked demonstrators on Hrushevskoho Street on Jan. 22, was one of the saddest stories published by Maidaners. Berdinskikh interviewed Nigoyan on Jan. 3 and found out that he had been at the protests since early December, helping at the kitchen and chopping wood for the fires.
“He was an incredible person, his openness inspired me. He was ready to tell me anything, even his home address,” Berdinskikh says, recalling their conversation.
Berdinskikh says it’s been easy for her to find common ground with protesters.
“Sympathetic people who lived in the tents (on Independence Square) couldn’t understand what Facebook was, but still agreed to be interviewed,” she says. “I’ve heard different stories, sad and touching, even love stories. But the most inspiring people for me are successful activists who found time in their schedule to stand for their opinion at EuroMaidan.”
Maidaners project attracted a lot of media attention, and Berdinskikh have already refused several project-related job offers, including TV version of the project and full-time job writing about the people of EuroMaidan.
“When EuroMaidan will be history, I hope to create public website in various languages to keep information about these events available in future,” Berdinskikh said.
Berdinskikh is not the only one striving to document the faces of the protest. Yuriy Butusov, editor of Censor.net news website, is writing a book about EuroMaidan and its people. Butusov expects to finish a 400-page book before May.
“Being a victim of Berkut violence on Bankova Street (on Dec. 1, 2013) myself, I witnessed many episodes of heroism and solidarity of ordinary members of EuroMaidan,” Butusov says, explaining his initiative. “At first I wanted to write a short story, then an article, but finally there was so much information that I decided to write a book, and maybe a movie script too. My personal mission is to preserve memory about main characters of EuroMaidan – ordinary people that became Great Ukrainians.”
Maidaners page in English:
www.facebook.com/maidaners1
Maidaners page in Ukrainian:
www.facebook.com/maidaners
Kyiv Post intern Solomiya Zinevych can be reached at imberammiaz@gmail.
