The politics of decommunization in Ukraine 2014-2024

One of the most important humanitarian and constitutional reforms in states with a totalitarian past is aimed at raising public awareness of human rights violations. To this end, Ukraine has introduced a policy of national remembrance. Since the Soviet regime destroyed national identity, deformed the structure of society, suppressed individuality and leveled human rights, overcoming the consequences of totalitarianism is one of the central tasks of democratic transformation in Ukraine.

Yaryna Yasynevych
Yaryna Yasynevych is a member of the council of the coalition “Revival of the Reform Package”, program director of the Research Center for the Liberation Movement, curator of historical documentary exhibitions and historical non-fiction publications, and producer of cultural projects for the television channel “Espresso”. 

The policy of decommunization, which included the opening of the archives of the secret services of the previous totalitarian regime, a broad public discussion about its crimes, political condemnation at the level of parliamentary decisions and the restoration of justice for its victims, was implemented in most post-socialist states in the early 1990s. It became an important element of change that enabled the democratic development of these states and later their integration into the EU and NATO. 

Of the former Soviet republics, only the three Baltic states have implemented such system changes. In most of the other successor states of the Soviet Union, they were only fragmentary or were not initiated at all. There was no lustration. 

In Ukraine, too, there were no attempts to implement such a policy at state level for a long time after the restoration of independence in 1991. The situation only changed after the Orange Revolution in 2004, when the Institute of National Remembrance of Ukraine was founded under public pressure and the systematic opening of the KGB archives began. In 2006, the law recognizing the Holodomor as genocide was passed in the face of strong political resistance and intense propaganda from Russia. 

After the Revolution of Dignity in 2013-2014, the implementation of Ukraine's pro-European perspective required a whole series of measures to prevent the return to totalitarian practices, to honor the fighters for Ukraine's independence in the 20th century and to rehabilitate the victims of the repressions of the communist totalitarian regime of 1917-1991. 

The lecture will be held in Ukrainian with simultaneous interpretation into German.