A Difficult Farewell to the Empire: Practices of Overcoming the Totalitarian Past in Ukraine

Abstract

Overcoming the totalitarian past in Ukraine is a complex multifaceted process, during which it was necessary to solve such tasks as decommunization, de-Sovietization and decolonization/de-Russification in a parallel and comprehensive manner. In addition, in the 90s of the XX century they were part of even more complex general processes of post-Soviet transformations in Ukraine, when in a short period of time it was necessary to simultaneously solve a whole complex of others – economic, political, social, worldview, etc. - problems of varying degrees of complexity, focus and intensity.

Against this background, the processes of real decommunization and de-Sovietization seemed almost secondary to the mentioned set of problems. Their implementation was subject to the need to legitimize independence and preserve the territorial integrity of the state; formation of the population’s loyalty to the government and support for its political course.

In view of this, farewell to the totalitarian past was of a compromising nature, took place spontaneously, unsystematically, inconsistently, without proper informational, scientific and political support – under the influence of the current political situation, generated by a compromise between the post-communist nomenclature and liberal-democratic politicians. These processes were heterogeneous in the territorial dimension, varied at the national and local levels and were determined by the dynamics of the balance of political forces in local councils, causing heated scientific and political debates or experiencing latent or even open sabotage and resistance from politicians or citizens. There was a significant lag in the time and depth of such processes from the countries of Europe, which at one time belonged to the so-called “socialist camp”.

The components of these processes were the rehabilitation of victims of political repressions, the return of Crimean Tatars, the return of the names of Ukrainian political and cultural figures, spontaneous processes of “democommunization” such as the demolition of monuments to Lenin and other figures of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union-CPSU (the so-called “Lenin fall”).

A significant part of the processes of decolonization and de-Sovietization, which were supposed to take place during the first decade of Ukrainian independence, are not complete even at the current stage and were activated only in the conditions of the active phase of Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. As a result, unresolved, unspoken and not the completely reinterpreted totalitarian past often and still stands in the way of Ukraine’s development as a European democratic state.