Also adopted by Parliament: A bill on public procurement and another on the appointment of judges, both part of the fight against the corruption entrenched in Ukraine’s public life. Additionally, the legislature completed a reading of a bill on higher education that would give more autonomy to universities. Across the street from Parliament, the interim cabinet moved ahead with a crucial bill on decentralization that would give more power to the regions.

Hanna Hopko and her friends, who have been instrumental in drafting, preparing and promoting this legislative work, see it as the next stage of the revolution that started on Independence Square on Nov. 21, when President Yanukovych rejected an Association Agreement with the European Union. Civil society activists involved in local NGOs, they were on the Maidan from the first day. But after the president fled and his power base collapsed, they sensed the danger: The political establishment, including the opposition parties, which had not led the popular uprising but tried to surf on it, could very well pick up the pieces and start all over again, preserving the same rotten political system. The activists had good reason to worry: It happened before, with the Orange Revolution, in 2004. This time, they decided, things would be different, but only if the energy released by the movement was quickly translated into real, institutional change.

So they set up a “group of experts” comprising highly qualified people from civil society, think tanks, NGOs, the media and universities who are not involved in political parties but committed to the rule of law and to the democratic future of their country. Some of them had studied abroad. Ms. Gumenyuk earned a master’s degree in global journalism at Orebro University in Sweden. Daria Kaleniuk, 26, from Kharkiv, was a Fulbright scholar of the Chicago-Kent College of Law; she heads a group working on corruption in financial services. Most of them are in their 30s, and women are at the forefront.

This is the Maidan generation: Too young to be burdened by the experience of the Soviet Union, old enough to remember the failure of the Orange Revolution, they don’t want their children to be standing again on the Maidan 15 years from now. They started by assembling a few dozen experts. A month ago, they numbered more than 80; today it’s at least 150. Testifying to their new clout, they have formed a “committee to support reforms” that will hold biweekly meetings with the interim cabinet of ministers and parliamentary groups.

For them, this is a race against time. Notwithstanding events in the east, they believe they must build the foundations for structural change before the May 25 presidential election. So they work round the clock, organizing public meetings and keeping pressure on the government and Parliament. To bring to life proposed legislation that has been stalled for years, the activists have proposed a “reanimation package” of reforms, along with a detailed schedule for their adoption. This week, some of them went to Odessa and Dnipropetrovsk to present their initiatives to people in the east who, they claim, are just as worried about corruption and abuse of power as people in the west.