Halyna Stefanova, an actress of the Les Kurbas Center started the music-poetic action with the lines from Lesia Ukrainka’s The Possessed: “He may forgive, but he will never forget!”
The visitors were united by the feeling of sorrow, the mourning for the killed, and the uneasiness concerning the country’s future into one organism, which was breathing, empathizing, crying, passionately clapping hands, and freezing, listening carefully the Vasyl Stus’s prophetic verse. Stefanova’s performance was like a raw nerve owing to the apt selection of the poetic lines, which created the atmosphere, and the speeches of the guests created a touching literary-music event.
The photos on a big screen were the beginning and an unchangeable accompaniment of the evening: they showed the Maidan events from the first days till the funeral of the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred. The works were selected by an employee of the museum and an organizer of the action Yulia Kapshuchenko-Shumeiko from her photo archives (she took the photos of Maidan in the period from November 2013 till February 2014). Showing different sides of Maidan, they took the people present back to those tragic days, making them living through those events again.
The poems by Maidan activists were recited too: Kateryna Mykhailitsyna (written on February 11), Bohdan Solchanyk (he was killed on February 20), Yevhenia Bilchenko (written on February 21), Marianna Kiianovska, Olesia Samchych. A young volunteer of the Euromaidan, a poetess from Vinnytsia oblast Zoriana Palamarchuk read her poems about struggle, the Heavenly Hundred, war, Maidan, which are full of the feeling of invincibility and youth’s uncompromising attitude, and recalled her debut reading of her poems which took place at the museum two years ago. One of the hosts, member of the band TaRUTA Yevhen Romanenko (Hedgehog) wrote a well-known song “Heavenly Hundred” based on her verse. He recalled how he became one of the hosts of the Euromaidan on January 19, the bloody Epiphany: “Maidan is not a spot on a map, these are people. It continues in the east.”
A musician, the front man of the band Tin Sontsia Serhii Vasyliuk performed in Euromaidan for the whole first night (when it was raining for the whole night and a hundred of people was in the square near the stele of Independence) – his author’s Cossack-style songs were calling upon the people, “To stand! No! To stand firm!”
The “voice of Maidan” Yevhen Nyshchuk recalled how the image of the Heavenly Hundred emerged, “This sotnia will go to heaven,” and called upon people to look in the sky more often.
Oksana Nezhyvenko, a friend of the Hero of Heavenly Hundred, a farmer from Kremenets raion, Oleksandr Kapynis (they went on a hunger strike together to protect the Ukrainian language), his fiancee Olena Kotliar, and sister Natalia Kaniaieva shared their memories about him. They brought a video where merry Oleksandr was teaching his fellow villagers Ukrainian dances and played the bandura, on February 14 he sang to guitar accompaniment for his friends in Maidan (without hesitation he came here from Ternopil oblast to defend the interests of Ukrainians). He was shot down on February 19.
The performance of the girls became the culmination of the evening. Natalia, to commemorate her brother, sang a song of Ukrainian insurgents to the accompaniment of his guitar. Today Sashko’s portrait is on the Flags of Heroes in a Ukrainian church in Paris.
Finally, an author and performer Yurii Starchevod together with his friends sang the song “Ukraine is United,” which became a kind of an anthem, a symbol of unity not only of the Euromaidan, but entire Ukraine.
On this day the museum also held an exhibit dedicated to the days of commemoration of the activists killed in Instytutska Street.
