Living Through Revolution: A View from an Apartment in Ukraine

Andrey Kurkov’s diary begins on Thursday, 21 November 2013—the day the Ukrainian government decided to suspend preparations to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union. Many Ukrainians hoped this agreement would draw Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and reorient it westward. After hearing the news, Kurkov heads to a café where he orders a coffee and then decides to add some cognac to it. He writes, “We have, once again, had our future taken away from us.”1 One of Ukraine’s most well-known fiction writers, Kurkov has kept diaries for decades, but it was not until the EuroMaidan Revolution, the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea, and the subsequent war in eastern Ukraine, that he decided to publish his personal reflections spanning the period from late November 2013 until late April 2014.