Ukraine’s conflict between givers and takers explained by journalist and …
Oksana Forostyna describes changes that Kyiv and Lviv underwent after Euromaidan
Over the past year a new, European movement has been shaking up the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. On viewpoint we are joined by Oksana Forostyna, a Ukrainian journalist and executive editor at ‘Krytyka’ magazine. We’re discussing Kyiv’s slow but steady rise from its post-Soviet deep sleep.
“The people always described as kind of creative class were crucial part of [Euro]maidan, they were drivers of [Euro]maidan, and of course after that I guess they feel more empowered.”
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“The main conflict of views in Ukraine is not between the old and the young, but rather between givers and takers. By givers I mean people who care about the war in the east, about [Euro]maidan before that, about society at large, about new laws in the parliament. They are actually involved in what we would describe as civic society. And the other part, the takers, can also be described as post-Soviet people. They expect that someone else will take care of them.”
“I think the main change for Lviv is to stay open to the world as it was declared. Now Lviv has a lot of tourists, refugees, people from Crimea and eastern Ukraine. And it’s a kind of challenge how the society will react to this diversity.”
Read also Families displaced from Russian-occupied Crimea launch new businesses in Lviv
“[Culture] is a kind of an institutional legacy of Lviv. Even in the Soviet times, when everything around was like dead, Lviv was one of the Soviet Union’s capital of the hippie movement, for example.”
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