Decommunization in Ukraine

In April 2015 a decommunization process started in Ukraine after laws were approved that outlawed communist and Soviet symbols.

History

On 9 April 2015 the Ukrainian parliament passed legislation, submitted by the Second Yatsenyuk Government, banning the promotion of symbols of “Communist and National Socialist totalitarian regimes”.^[1][2] One of the main provisions of the bill was the recognition of the Soviet Union was "criminal" and one that it "pursued a state terror policy".^[3] The legislation prohibits the use of Communist symbols and propaganda and also bans all symbols and propaganda of national-socialism and its values and any activities of Nazi or fascist groups in Ukraine.^[4] This ban applies to monuments, place and street names, which will have to be removed or renamed within six months once the President signs the legislation into law.^[5] This will result in the removement of hundreds of statues, the replacement of millions of street signs and the renaming of populated places including some of Ukraine's biggest cities like Dnipropetrovsk.^[6] During and after Euromaidan, starting with the fall of the monument to Lenin in Kiev on 8 December 2013, several Lenin monuments and statues have already been removed/destroyed by protesters.^[7]

The legislation also granted special legal status to veterans of the “struggle for Ukrainian independence” from 1917 to 1991 (the lifespan of the Soviet Union).^[8] The same day the parliament also passed a law that replaced the term "Great Patriotic War" in the national lexicon with "World War II".^[9]

See also

• Lustration in Ukraine

References and notes

External links