258
“The fundamental dilemma in Ukraine’s decommunization process is how to undo
the legal, institutional, and historical legacy of the Soviet era without repeating the
Soviet approach of mandating one ‘correct’ interpretation of the past . . .”
The Battle for Historical Memory
in Postrevolutionary Ukraine
OXANA SHEVEL
T
he triumph of the 2014 Euromaidan protests
in Ukraine raised many hopes both
domestically and internationally. Yet today,
two and a half years since the pro-European
uprising in Kiev’s central Maidan Nezalezhnosti,
or Independence Square, led to the overthrow of
President Viktor Yanukovych, many goals of the
protesters remain unrealized. Some progress has
been made on issues such as the prosecution of
corrupt politicians, judicial reform, and other
measures to establish transparency and accountability
for the powerful. But the overall results to
date from efforts to curb corruption, overhaul the
economy, and integrate with Europe are disappointing
for both Ukrainian citizens and supporters
of the reform movement abroad. There is one
area, however, where post-Euromaidan Ukraine is
looking very different from the nation that existed
before the 2014 uprising: the politics of memory
and, more broadly, the politics of national identity.
Instead of straddling the border between East
and West—that is, between the “Russian world”
and Western Europe, the two poles of the cultural,
geographic, and political borderland where
Ukraine is situated—the postrevolutionary government
has taken major steps to pivot more decisively
away from Russian influence. A package of
four so-called decommunization laws adopted in
May 2015 sharply parts ways with the frames and
assessments of the common Soviet past in an effort
to reorient historical memory. However, just how
“European” some of the new policy measures are,
and whether these government initiatives will find
broad acceptance among the Ukrainian public, remain
open questions.
Post-Euromaidan Ukraine has undergone sharp
shifts in public opinion, leading commentators
to talk about a process of rapid consolidation of
Ukrainian national identity. This process, as well
as the end of the Ukrainian government’s geopolitical
and cultural-historical oscillation between
Russia and the West was ironically aided by Russia
itself in its quest to keep Ukraine in Moscow’s
orbit in the wake of the Euromaidan protesters’
victory in February 2014. Russia’s annexation of
Crimea the following month and subsequent instigation
of and continued support for a separatist
insurgency in eastern Ukraine led to a sharp
decline in pro-Russian public sentiment, including
in the Russian-speaking southern and eastern
regions where Russian influence has historically
been strongest.
TURNING TO EUROPE
Given the choice between membership in the
European Union or in the Moscow-led Customs
Union, which includes Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan,
Ukrainian public opinion has shifted
decisively in favor of the EU. (It was Yanukovych’s
decision not to sign an EU partnership agreement
that precipitated the protests against him in late
2013.) In a September 2014 survey conducted by
Gallup on behalf of the International Republican
Institute, 59 percent of respondents favored membership
in the EU, compared with just 17 percent
who favored joining the Moscow-led grouping. (In
September 2013, before the Euromaidan protests
started, the corresponding figures were 42 percent
and 37 percent, respectively.)
This clear preference for the EU over the Customs
Union has persisted for the past two years:
while support for the EU option has declined somewhat,
the attractiveness of the Customs Union has
OXANA SHEVEL is an associate professor of political science
at Tufts University.
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Historical Memory in Postrevolutionary Ukraine • 259
not increased. According to a May 2016 poll by the
Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), 49
percent of Ukrainians favor membership in the EU,
versus 16 percent who prefer the Customs Union.
Ukrainian attitudes toward Russia, and especially
Russia’s leadership, have also become much
more negative since the Crimea annexation. Polling
by the KIIS found that from February 2014 to
May 2015, the share of those holding positive attitudes
toward Russia dropped from 78 percent
to 30 percent nationwide. And even though there
was a partial rebound by the middle of 2016, to 42
percent viewing Russia positively in August 2016
(possibly due to the “routinization” of the conflict
in eastern Ukraine, as the KIIS institute director
hypothesized), just 8 percent of Ukrainians felt
positively about the Russian leadership in August
2016. Negative views of the Kremlin prevail in every
region of Ukraine, even the Russian-speaking
south and east.
Polls showing a jump in support for Ukraine’s
independence further illustrate the change in attitudes
in the south and the
east. Since before the December
1991 referendum
on declaring independence
from the Soviet Union, KIIS
has been tracking popular
attitudes on Ukrainian independence
if another referendum
were to be conducted. In 2011, for example,
53 percent in the east would have voted for independence
in a hypothetical referendum and 47 percent
against; in the south, 47 percent would have
voted for independence and 53 percent against. By
August 2016, the same pollster found that 71.5
percent in the east, and 78.5 percent in the south,
would have voted for independence. Nationwide,
87 percent would have voted for independence in
August 2016, compared with 67 percent in 2011.
REGIONAL VARIATIONS
Changes in popular attitudes, profound as they
are, have not erased regional differences. In the
east (although no longer in the south), support
for membership in the Russia-led Customs Union
remains greater than support for membership in
the EU (31 percent versus 21 percent, according
to a June 2015 poll by the Raiting Group). Attitudes
toward different aspects of the Soviet past
also vary substantially by region.
On the one hand, in part as a result of a campaign
undertaken during the 2005–10 tenure of
President Viktor Yushchenko to recognize the
1932–33 massive famine that killed millions of
Ukrainians as a genocide of the Ukrainian people
orchestrated by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, attitudes
toward the famine (known as the Holodomor,
or death by hunger, in Ukraine) had changed
already by the late 2000s, and this tendency continued
post-Euromaidan. According to an October
2010 poll by the Raiting Group, 60 percent nationwide
regarded the Holodomor as a genocide
against the Ukrainian people. By September 2015
this figure had risen to 81 percent, and it was a
majority view in every region of Ukraine (though
it ranged from 64 percent in the eastern regions to
98 percent in the west).
Ukraine’s experience within the USSR is another
issue on which regional differences persist. The
formation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
as part of the Soviet Union is viewed positively
in all areas except in the two western regions of
Galicia and Volyn, according to a December 2014–
January 2015 poll by the Democratic Initiatives
Foundation. At the same
time, attitudes toward some
other key aspects of the Soviet
past remain largely unchanged.
Stalin, for example,
continues to be viewed
positively as a “great leader”
by a significant minority
nationwide (28.5 percent, according to a March
2016 KIIS poll), while a plurality of respondents in
the eastern regions hold such a view (45 percent
agreeing compared with 30 percent disagreeing).
This is not so different from attitudes in 1991,
when 26 percent of Ukrainians considered Stalin
a great leader.
Historical figures who are being rehabilitated
by the new decommunization laws, such as the
wartime Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera,
continue to be viewed unfavorably by majorities
everywhere except in the west of Ukraine,
even though negative attitudes have subsided over
time. Bandera has long been a highly controversial
figure in Ukraine and has inspired much hatred in
Russia. In June 1941, after Nazi Germany invaded
the Soviet Union, supporters of Bandera declared
independence for a Ukrainian state, while promising
to cooperate with Nazi Germany. Many of his
followers participated in killings of Jews and Poles
during the war, and after Germany was defeated,
nationalists in western Ukraine waged large-scale
partisan warfare against Soviet forces.
Advocates of decommunization
link the process to the war effort
against Russia-backed separatists.
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260 • CURRENT HISTORY • October 2016
The Soviet and Russian view has long been that
Bandera and his wartime followers were nothing
more than murderous Nazi collaborators. Current
Russian propaganda links the post-Euromaidan
Kiev government to this legacy, routinely calling
the new leadership “fascist.” A May 2014 poll by
the Raiting Group found that 31 percent of Ukrainians
had a positive view of Bandera (up from 21
percent two years earlier), while 48 percent had
a negative view. Regional polarization is clear in
public attitudes toward Bandera, with 76 percent
in the west having a mostly positive view, in stark
contrast with just 8 percent in the east and 15 percent
in the south.
NEW LANDSCAPE
Shifts in public opinion, as substantial as they
are, cannot by themselves explain the dramatic legal
steps that the post-Euromaidan Ukraine leadership
has taken to reshape historical memory and
state policies in this area. Changes in Ukraine’s
memory politics, reflected in the four decommunization
laws passed by the legislature
in the spring of 2015,
were a product of several factors.
The October 2014 elections
produced a major realignment
in the legislature. For the
first time in Ukraine’s postSoviet
history, elections had
produced a pro-Western and pro-market majority
rather than a parliament more or less evenly divided
between broadly pro-Russian and pro-Western
forces.
Changes in popular preferences contributed to
this electoral outcome, but so did Russia’s annexation
of Crimea and the war in Donbas. Because of
the armed conflict, voting did not take place in 27
electoral districts located in the territories no longer
controlled by the Kiev government. These districts
had over 4.5 million voters who traditionally
voted for pro-Russian parties but did not participate
in the October 2014 elections.
The implosion of the pro-Yanukovych Party of
Regions and low turnout in the southeastern areas
where pro-Russian parties have stronger bases
of support were additional contributing factors
in the dramatic change in the legislative political
landscape. The Communist Party, for the first time
since 1991, ended up with no representation at all
in the parliament, and parties with a self-declared
pro-Western orientation held a majority. Five parties
that won a total of 288 out of 423 contested
seats formed the ruling coalition, led by President
Petro Poroshenko’s bloc. After a number of candidates
who ran as independents joined the coalition,
the majority increased to 302 members—
large enough to amend the constitution. It has
since shrunk as a result of infighting and power
struggles, and by April 2016 it was down to 237
members, with just two of the original five parties
(the Poroshenko Bloc and the Popular Front).
LEGISLATING HISTORY
On April 9, 2015, the Ukrainian parliament by
a comfortable majority adopted the four decommunization
laws, which had been prepared under
the auspices of the Ukrainian Institute of National
Memory, a government body originally created by
Yushchenko to support research and forge a policy.
They include Law No. 2558, “On the condemnation
of the communist and national socialist (Nazi)
regimes, and prohibition of propaganda of their
symbols”; Law No. 2538-1, “On the legal status and
honoring of fighters for Ukraine’s independence
in the twentieth century”; Law
No. 2539, “On remembering
the victory over Nazism in the
Second World War”; and Law
No. 2540, “On access to the archives
of repressive bodies of
the communist totalitarian regime
from 1917–1991.”
The laws were adopted without public or parliamentary
debate. Votes were held just a few days
after the drafts were submitted to the parliament.
This swift passage was in stark contrast with the
fate of similar measures just a few years before.
During Yushchenko’s presidency there were multiple
failed attempts to pass draft laws recognizing
nationalist organizations from the interwar
and World War II period as fighters for Ukrainian
independence. Under Yanukovych, no such attempts
were made.
The decommunization laws contained a number
of provisions that pivoted Ukraine’s official
memory regime in a direction sharply away from
the Russian-Soviet narrative of the Soviet period,
and in particular the World War II era. The law on
remembering the victory over Nazism replaced the
Soviet term “Great Patriotic War” with the internationally
used “Second World War,” and established
May 8 as the Day of Memory, also corresponding
to European practices for commemorating the surrender
of Nazi Germany. The new Day of Memory
did not replace Victory Day on May 9, however,
The laws in their current
form do not accomplish
genuine decommunization.
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Historical Memory in Postrevolutionary Ukraine • 261
and thus combined acceptance of the Soviet-era
May 9 celebration, still highly popular in Ukraine,
with a new date and new terminology for remembering
the war.
The law on victory commemoration contained
a controversial provision prohibiting “falsification
of the history of the Second World War.” The
law on the condemnation of totalitarian regimes
equated communism with Nazism, and banned the
propagation of their symbols except for scientificeducational
activities, military-historical reenactments,
and imagery in cemeteries. One major
practical consequence of these measures was a ban
on, and mandated removal of, many Soviet-era
symbols and monuments. By the end of August
2016, 1,200 Lenin statues had been taken down.
Another provision in the law compelled local authorities
to change within a six-month period all
geographic names honoring communist and Soviet
leaders. By late August 2016, 987 cities, towns,
and villages had been renamed, as well as 26 administrative
districts.
The law on condemnation of totalitarianism
also criminalized “propaganda” in support of the
communist and Nazi regimes, which it defined
as “public denial of the criminal nature” of those
regimes and “spreading of information aimed at
justifying [their] criminal nature.” Disseminating
such propaganda and symbols of the totalitarian
regimes was made an offense punishable by 5 to
10 years’ imprisonment.
Perhaps the most controversial of the decommunization
laws was the one on recognition of
fighters for Ukrainian independence in the twentieth
century. This law granted such status to
members of Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent
Army (UPA), two of the most important nationalist
organizations from the interwar and World War II
period. While these groups did fight for independence,
their members also committed war crimes
by participating in the Holocaust and in the extermination
of Polish civilians. Despite these aspects
of their history, the law forbade “public display of
disrespectful attitudes” toward recognized independence
fighters, as well as “public denial of the
legitimacy of the struggle for Ukraine’s independence
in the twentieth century.”
DEFENDING DEBATE
Immediately after their adoption, the decommunization
laws came under criticism from several
quarters, ranging from the Russian Foreign Ministry
to Ukrainian Communist Party leaders and
members of Yanukovych’s former Party of Regions
(now known as the Opposition Bloc), to Ukrainian
and international rights groups, Ukrainian academics
and public figures, and Western experts. There
have been several broad thrusts to this criticism.
First, critics have noted that the laws have the
potential to stifle open debate over history by introducing
legal punishments for publicly expressing
“wrong” opinions about the communist period
or about fighters for Ukraine’s independence. The
law’s “falsification of history” language is strongly
reminiscent of infamous measures adopted in Russia
several years earlier, leading one commentator
writing in May 2015 in the influential Ukrainian
intellectual magazine Krytyka to ask rhetorically:
“Has this law been adopted in postrevolutionary
Ukraine or in Putin’s Russia?”
Criticisms voiced in Ukrainian media and blogs,
as well as a number of influential Western outlets,
also highlighted the dangers to free speech and
scholarly inquiry inherent in vague provisions such
as those banning “propaganda” for the communist
and Nazi regimes, public display of “a disrespectful
attitude” toward independence fighters, and
“public denial of the legitimacy of the struggle for
the independence of Ukraine.” Some decried the
honorable recognition bestowed on organizations
whose members committed war crimes against civilian
populations.
Critics also warned of the laws’ potential to aggravate
domestic divisions by alienating the south
and east of the country, given that most of the localities
to be renamed were concentrated in those
regions. Nostalgia for the Soviet era is stronger
there, and greater resistance to decommunization
was to be expected. According to the Ukrainian
Institute of National Memory, the regions with
the largest shares of the 877 localities slated for
renaming were in the east and the south: Donetsk,
with 99 localities; Kharkiv, 97; Dnipropetrovsk,
84; Crimea, 66; Odessa, 55; and Luhansk, 54.
LOCAL RESISTANCE
The decommunization laws entered into force
in May 2015, and by now several consequences
of their implementation (or the lack thereof) have
become apparent, some of them unexpected. For
one, the laws so far do not seem to have aggravated
polarization in Ukraine. In part this is because
many places subject to the renaming requirement
are located in parts of the country that the central
government does not control (in Crimea and the
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262 • CURRENT HISTORY • October 2016
conflict areas in Donetsk and Luhansk). Of 54 localities
to be renamed in Luhansk, for example,
only 19 are in Ukrainian-controlled territory. In
other words, in areas where resistance to decommunization
measures was likely to have been the
strongest, the process has not taken place.
Another reason behind the limited local opposition
to decommunization is the nonideological
nature of much of the resistance. Polls, media
interviews with citizens, and records of town hall
meetings show that people often oppose decommunization
not for ideological reasons (because
they have positive views of Soviet-era leaders or are
committed to the preservation of Soviet-era symbols)
but because of the perceived financial costs
of renaming places and removing monuments, and
the feeling that decommunization will not result in
any socioeconomic improvements. Such nonideological
opposition leads to a certain public passivity
rather than active protest, though the renaming
of some places became highly controversial.
One example is Kirovohrad, a regional capital
in central Ukraine named after
the Leningrad Communist
Party head Sergei Kirov, who
was murdered, most likely on
Stalin’s orders, in the 1930s.
Polls showed that Kirovohrad
residents overwhelmingly preferred
to retain the name. But
once the renaming process at the local level ended
in a stalemate, the national parliament got involved
and changed the name to Kropyvnytsky in
honor of the author and playwright Marko Kropyvnytsky
(1840–1919)—the option favored by
just 8 percent of local residents, according to an
April 2016 KIIS poll. Otherwise, the renaming of
1,021 localities (completed by July 2016) proceeded
largely uneventfully, and in many cases the
process had an unintended positive side effect of
spurring public activism and discussion in mandatory
local hearings.
The decommunization laws nevertheless did
produce some troubling consequences. The
Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group reported
in May 2016 that police in the city of Cherkasy
started a criminal investigation of marchers who
unfurled a communist-era red flag during the
Victory Day march. Such actions are unlikely to
withstand scrutiny if brought before the European
Court of Human Rights.
In its December 2015 interim report on the law
condemning the communist and Nazi regimes, the
Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, an expert
body on constitutional law, opined that a mere display
of symbols should not result in imprisonment.
The commission more generally criticized the law
for its potential to infringe on the rights of freedom
of expression and association, and for not being
“precise enough to enable individuals to regulate
their conduct according to the law and to prevent
arbitrary interference by public authorities.”
PROVOKING THE POLES
Advocates of the laws seem to view decommunization
as nothing less than a security issue, and link
the process to the war effort against Russia-backed
separatists. In the words of the deputy director of
the Institute of National Memory, “Where there are
no monuments [to Lenin and other Soviet leaders],
there is no war today. Where this tradition,
this mythology, this hatred that was propagated by
communist propaganda is alive—this is where we
see war, confrontation, and deaths.” Yet there is no
evidence that decommunization will result in fundamental
changes of opinion
in regions where stronger proRussian
attitudes predominate,
especially in the short term.
However, the decommunization
process as it has been
implemented could actually
weaken Ukraine’s security by
offending some long-term allies such as Poland.
The glorification of wartime Ukrainian nationalist
groups and leaders implicated in the mass murder
of Polish civilians has already led to friction with
Warsaw. In April 2015, the decommunization laws
were approved by the Ukrainian parliament right
after Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski addressed
the legislature. The provocative renaming
of Kiev’s Moscow Prospect as Stepan Bandera Avenue
was also ill-timed, occurring on the eve of the
anniversary of the 1943 Volyn massacre of Poles
by Ukrainian nationalists.
After Komorowski lost a presidential election
to the right-wing challenger Andrzej Duda in
May 2015, Ukraine and Poland clashed over the
history of the OUN and the UPA. In July 2016,
both chambers of the Polish parliament voted
to make June 11 a day of memory for the Polish
“victims of genocide perpetuated by the
OUN-UPA.” In September 2016, the Ukrainian
legislature responded by adopting a resolution
condemning the Polish move for “giving a politically
and legally incorrect characterization to the
Negative views of
the Kremlin prevail in
every region of Ukraine.
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Historical Memory in Postrevolutionary Ukraine • 263
tragic pages of Polish-Ukrainian history, in particular
to the conflict between our people during
World War II.” The resolution states that the
Polish parliament’s act threatens to undermine
“positive results of cooperation reached during
the constructive Polish-Ukrainian dialogue
over the course of the past decades.” But part of
the blame for this outcome can be attributed to
some of the content of Ukraine’s decommunization
laws and the manner of their adoption. So
far the frictions have not lead Poland to lessen
its support for Ukraine against Russia, but future
relations may depend on whether more radical
or more conciliatory voices come to steer each
country’s domestic politics on these issues.
HEROES AND VILLAINS
The fundamental dilemma in Ukraine’s decommunization
process is how to undo the legal, institutional,
and historical legacy of the Soviet era
without repeating the Soviet approach of mandating
one “correct” interpretation of the past and
punishing the public expression of dissenting
viewpoints. This dilemma is further complicated
by the fact that criticism of the decommunization
laws has come both from intellectual circles in the
West and in Ukraine that are genuinely concerned
with upholding freedom of expression and fostering
free historical inquiry, and from retrograde
forces in Ukraine and Russia concerned first and
foremost with keeping Ukraine in the Russian
sphere of influence and preserving the Soviet-era
memory regime with its assessments of events,
groups, and individuals.
At an intellectual and normative level it may
seem quite obvious that Ukraine should substantially
amend the decommunization laws to
respond to criticism of the threat they pose to
freedom of speech and scholarly inquiry, and refrain
from granting formal historical recognition
to individuals and organizations implicated in war
crimes against civilians. As a matter of politics,
however, this course of action is not so easy, since
it could be readily construed as bowing to pressure
from Russia, the aggressor state, which itself is all
too ready to falsify history and silence opponents
in historical and political discussions. The legacy
of past fighters for Ukrainian independence also
has particular appeal in the context of today’s territorial
aggression and serves as an inspiration for
defense efforts.
Yet it is clear that the laws in their current form
do not accomplish genuine decommunization.
They do not move Ukraine away from a highly
politicized approach to the history of the Soviet
era, when the government decreed a single correct
interpretation of history, designated heroes and
villains, and reduced historical complexities to a
black-and-white ideological picture of a good “us”
versus an enemy “other.” Nor do the laws reflect
European standards of memorialization policies
whereby freedom of expression is upheld, honoring
civilian victims of political violence is a central
priority, and murder and brutalization of the civilian
population are condemned, regardless of the
goals for which they were carried out.
Whether Ukraine will revise its decommunization
laws to actually move closer to Europe and
away from its Soviet and authoritarian past remains
to be seen. Poroshenko promised to introduce
amendments to address the criticisms when
he signed the laws into force, but so far he has not
submitted any. However, a pair of amendments to
the law on the recognition of independence fighters,
proposed by two members of parliament in
July 2016, are pending. One of them would exclude
“persons whose actions qualify as a crime
against humanity” from eligibility for the status
of independence fighters. It would also explicitly
exempt “historical research and publication of its
results” from those unlawful actions that constitute
a “disrespectful attitude” toward the fighters
or “public denial of the rightfulness of the struggle
for independence.”
If these amendments are adopted, it would be a
step in the right direction. As stated in the Council
of Europe opinion, the law should protect not
only historical research but any scholarly inquiry
or artistic work, and should not be used to “force
a certain view of history on the residents of the
country, or stifle public discussion.”
The political changes ushered in by the Euromaidan
victory and by Russia’s aggression have
led to a consolidation of Ukrainian national identity
and opened new horizons for Ukrainian lawmakers
to legislate major reforms in the sphere of
memory and identity politics. To take advantage of
this new reality and to firmly reorient Ukraine toward
Europe, Ukrainian leaders need to be aware
that a true break from the authoritarianism of the
“Russian world” and the communist era cannot be
accomplished by neo-Soviet methods. ■
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