Revolution of Dignity became the impetus for the revival of Ukrainian culture
This week, Ukraine commemorates the twelfth anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity. The events of Maidan were a turning point in the modern history of our country. We paid an extremely high price for the right to choose our own civilisation – the lives of the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred, thousands of wounded, broken destinies. This memory will forever remain a moral guide for society and the state.
After Maidan, Ukraine changed. Society demonstrated unprecedented mobilisation. Many protesters joined the Armed Forces and, since 2014, have defended the state in the east and, with the start of a full-scale invasion, along the entire front line.
At the same time, transformations took place not only in the sphere of security or politics. The Revolution of Dignity became an impetus for a profound rethinking of Ukrainian identity, language, culture, and traditions. We are witnessing a systemic demand from society to return to its roots.
These conclusions are confirmed by the experience of implementing educational initiatives in partnership with the Kolo Charitable Foundation as part of the Know Your Ukraine project, an educational project on traditional Ukrainian culture. Its main activity is to create training courses, lessons, and practical materials for educators and the general public on the main Ukrainian holidays and traditions. This is done in partnership with cultural institutions and with the support of patrons.
In 2022, a thematic block about Christmas was launched, and in 2025, a course about Pokrova. Work is currently underway on materials dedicated to Easter and Kupala Day. In the last six months alone, the Pokrova and Christmas courses have been taken by more than 18,000 participants from different regions of Ukraine.
It is important to note that the training is not limited to an online format. We deliberately emphasise the practical application of knowledge in communities. With the support of the project, traditional Christmas processions with caroling stars took place in more than 15 communities, including those near the front line. More than 100 public, cultural, and youth organisations from all over the country, from Kharkiv to Chernivtsi, took part in the selection process.
The tradition of Christmas processions with stars began to revive in Lviv in 2006 and in Kyiv in 2013. Today, it is returning to other cities and communities – in Odesa, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, as well as in communities in the Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Khmelnytskyi, and Ivano-Frankivsk regions.
A separate initiative was the competition ‘Give me a penny, uncle,’ to which we invited teachers and schoolchildren from different regions. The idea was to revive the living tradition of caroling – not as a stage performance, but as genuine communal singing from house to house, as practiced by generations of Ukrainians. Children and adults recorded these initiatives on video and shared them publicly.
The winners were participants from the southern and eastern regions. This is particularly symbolic. In places where the historical connection with tradition has been broken or suppressed, a new generation is now emerging that is consciously returning to Ukrainian cultural heritage.
The state and civil society must act together. We create conditions, provide knowledge and tools, but it is the communities that fill them with living content. Ukrainians demonstrate that culture is not only the heritage of the past, but also the basis of resilience in times of war.
Today, the revival of traditions is not nostalgia or a decorative element. It is a matter of identity, national security, and strategic future. Ukrainian culture must take its rightful place in Ukrainian society – as the foundation of our statehood and internal unity.
Source: GORDON