“Hedgehog in the Fog” as a Maidan Hero

Abstract

Norshtein’s “Hedgehog in the Fog” is a Soviet cartoon about a little hedgehog making his way through a scary world of fog. This film has generated its own lore, and there is also a monument to the hedgehog in Kyiv. During the Maidan events, the hedgehog cartoon acquired a new meaning; the everyman/hedgehog became first a symbol of searching for the right path and then of protest. Maidan brought the destruction of Soviet monuments, but not of the Kyiv hedgehog statue; it was modified to convey these new senses as a part of Kyiv’s cultural heritage. This paper explores the Hedgehog cartoon as the focus of a new lore. The paper is based on the author’s presentation at the American Folklore Society Annual Conference 2014 and her MA thesis, Maidan on Facebook: Sensitive, Expressive and Interpretative Protest Lore.