Decommunization in Ukraine
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On 15 May 2015, President
In the early stages of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, the
By 2016, 51,493 streets and 987 cities and villages were renamed (with either the restoration of their historic names or new names), and 1,320 Lenin monuments and 1,069 monuments to other communist figures removed.[16]
History
Early unofficial reforms
An unofficial
In the following years, although at a slow rate, historical monuments to Soviet leaders were removed in Ukraine.
Post-Euromaidan reforms
During and after Euromaidan, starting with the fall of the monument to Lenin in Kyiv on 8 December 2013, several Lenin monuments and statues were removed or destroyed by protesters.[5]
In April 2014, a year before the formal, nationwide decommunization process in Ukraine local authorities removed and altered communist symbols and place names, as in
On 9 April 2015, the Ukrainian parliament passed legislation on decommunization.
Expressing pro-communist views was not made illegal.
The legislation also granted special legal status to veterans of the "struggle for
On 15 May 2015, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed the Decommunisation Laws.[4] This started a six-month period for the removal of communist monuments and renaming of public places named after communist-related themes.[4]
The Ukrainian decommunization law applies, but is not limited to:
- the Flag of the Soviet Union
- the flags of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and of the 14 other republics of the Soviet Union, as well as the flags of the socialist countries of Eastern Europe and abroad[a]
- the State Emblem of the Soviet Union and its constituent republics as well as the socialist countries of Eastern Europe and abroad[b]
- the republics[c]
- the Red star
- the Hammer and sickle
- images bearing the likeness of Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il Sung, and Che Guevara
- military uniforms
The laws were published in Holos Ukrayiny on 20 May 2015; this made them come into force officially the next day.[28]
On 3 June 2015, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory published a list of 22 cities and 44 villages subject to renaming.
In a 24 July 2015 decree based on the decommunization laws, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry stripped the Communist Party of Ukraine, Communist Party of Ukraine (renewed) and Communist Party of Workers and Peasants of their right to participate in elections and it stated it was continuing the court actions (that started in July 2014) to end the registration of Ukraine's communist parties.[11][29]
On 30 September 2015, the District Administrative Court in Kyiv banned the parties Communist Party of Workers and Peasants and Communist Party of Ukraine (renewed); they both did not appeal.[30][31]
In October 2015, a statue of Lenin in Odesa was converted into a statue of Star Wars villain Darth Vader.[32]
On 16 December 2015, the Kyiv District Administrative Court validated the claim of the Ministry of Justice in full, banning the activities of the Communist Party of Ukraine.[33][34] The party appealed this ban at the European Court of Human Rights.[35]
In March 2016, statues of Lenin,
On 19 May 2016, the Ukrainian parliament voted to rename Ukraine's fourth-largest city
The Ukrainian parliament declared in July 2016 that the new names of places in
In May 2017, 46 Ukrainian MPs, mainly from the Opposition Bloc faction, appealed to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to declare the 2015 decommunization laws unconstitutional.[45]
Director of the
In February 2019, the
On 16 July 2019, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine upheld the 2015 Ukrainian decommunization laws.[45]
On 7 November 2020 in the village Mala Rohan, an Emblem of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was dismantled from the facade of a school.[48]
Reforms following the Russian invasion of Ukraine
On 27 April 2022 (during the
On 1 August 2023, the
On 24 October 2023 President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed Law No. 8263 that abolished the concept of urban-type settlements in Ukraine.[53] Law No. 8263 was meant to facilitate "de-Sovietization of the procedure for solving certain issues of the administrative and territorial system of Ukraine."[53]
On 30 January 2024, the governor of Lviv Oblast said that the region was the first in Ukraine to remove all of its communist-era monuments.[54]
Criticism
On 18 May 2015, the
The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group stated (in May 2015) the laws "(one of which) effectively criminalizes public expression of views held by many Ukrainians".[26][55]
On 18 December 2015, the Venice Commission stated that Ukraine's decommunization laws did not comply with European legislative standards.[56] It was in particular critical about the banning of communist parties.[56]
In April 2015, Russian lawmakers claimed that it was "
In February 2022, in connection with a presidential address of Russian president
Results
Since 16 December 2015 three communist parties are banned in Ukraine (the
Ukraine had 5,500 Lenin monuments in 1991, declining to 1,300 by December 2015.
On 16 January 2017, the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance stated that 51,493 streets, squares and "other facilities" had been renamed due to decommunization.[60] By June 2016 there were renamed 19 raions, 27 urban districts, 29 cities, 48 urban-type settlements, 119 rural settlements and 711 villages. The fourth largest city was renamed from Dnipropetrovsk to Dnipro. In the second-largest city of Ukraine,[61] Kharkiv, more than 200 streets, 5 administrative raions, 4 parks and 1 metro station had been renamed by early February 2016.[62]
In all of 2016, 51,493 streets and 987 cities and villages were renamed, 25 raions were renamed and 1,320
In February 2019,
In January 2021, 24 Ukrainian streets were still named after former Russian
The director of the
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many Lenin statues across Ukraine, which had been taken down by the Ukrainians in the preceding years, were re-erected by the Russians in the Russian-controlled areas.[69][70][71][72]
Polling
A November 2016 poll, showed that 48% of respondents supported a ban on Communist ideology in Ukraine, 36% were against it and 16% were undecided. It also showed that 41% of respondents supported the initiative to dismantle all monuments to Lenin in the country, whereas 48% were against it and 11% were undecided.[73]
As of 8 April 2022, according to a poll by the sociological group Rating, 76% of Ukrainians support the initiative to rename streets and other objects whose names are associated with the Soviet Union and Russia after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[74][75]
See also
- Bans on communist symbols
- Decommunization
- Human rights in Ukraine
- Demolition of monuments to Vladimir Lenin in Ukraine
- List of communist monuments in Ukraine
- List of Ukrainian toponyms that were changed as part of decommunization in 2016
- Lustration in Ukraine
- Derussification in Ukraine
- Soviet imagery during the Russo-Ukrainian War
Notes
- ^ This ban does not include the national flags of the People's Republic of China, Cuba, Czech Republic, Hungary, Laos, Poland and Vietnam.[citation needed]
- ^ The ban is not extended to the national emblems of Belarus, Cuba, Laos, North Macedonia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.[citation needed]
- ^ This does not affect the Anthems of Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and formerly, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. They all retained their Soviet-era melody with new lyrics written in its place.
- 2014 Crimean crisis, the status of the Crimea and of the city of Sevastopol is under dispute between Russia and Ukraine; Ukraine and the majority of the international community considers the Crimea and Sevastopol an integral part of Ukraine, while Russia, on the other hand, considers the Crimea and Sevastopol an integral part of Russia, with Sevastopol functioning as a federal city within the Crimean Federal District.[41][42][43]
- ^ There were (also) Tereshkova streets in Lviv Oblast's Busk, Rivne Oblast's Radyvyliv and Sarny, Khmelnytskyi Oblast's Dunaivtsi and Cherkasy Oblast's Smila and in some other towns and villages.[67]
References
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- ^ a b Motyl, Alexander J. (28 April 2015). "Decommunizing Ukraine". Foreign Affairs. Retrieved 19 May 2015.
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- ^ a b c Poroshenko signed the laws about decomunization. Ukrainska Pravda. 15 May 2015
Poroshenko signs laws on denouncing Communist, Nazi regimes, Interfax-Ukraine. 15 May 2015 - ^ a b c d e Shevchenko, Vitaly (14 April 2015). "Goodbye, Lenin: Ukraine moves to ban communist symbols". BBC News. Retrieved 17 May 2015.
- ^ a b c (in Ukrainian) In Ukraine rename 22 cities and 44 villages, Ukrainska Pravda (4 June 2015)
- ^ a b c d e f (in Ukrainian) "Komsomolsk in any case be renamed", depo.ua (1 October 2015)
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- ^ OSCE(18 May 2015)
- ^ "Turchynov asks Justice Ministry to ban Communist Party of Ukraine". Interfax-Ukraine. Retrieved 16 February 2015.
- ^ a b "Ukraine's Justice Ministry outlaws Communists from elections". Kyiv Post. 24 July 2015.
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- ^ Ishchenko, Volodymyr (18 December 2015). "Kiev has a nasty case of anti-communist hysteria". The Guardian.
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- ^ a b "Decommunization reform: 25 districts and 987 populated areas in Ukraine renamed in 2016", Ukrinform (27 December 2016)
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- ^ a b Ukrainian PM leads charge to erase Soviet history, Politico (27 April 2015)
- ^ Gedmin, Jeffrey (10 March 2014). "Ukraine: the Day After". The Weekly Standard. Archived from the original on 17 June 2015. Retrieved 19 May 2015.
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- ^ Пам'ятник Леніну у Дніпропетровську остаточно перетворили в купу каміння [Monument to Lenin in Dnipro finally turned into a pile of stones]. TSN.ua (in Ukrainian). 19 August 2014. Retrieved 19 May 2015.
- ^ Hyde, Lily (20 April 2015). "Ukraine to rewrite Soviet history with controversial 'decommunisation' laws". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 16 May 2015. Retrieved 17 May 2015.
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- ^ (in Ukrainian) Mykolaiv City Council on buildings dismantled Soviet "star", Ukrainska Pravda (12 November 2016)
- ^ a b Vitaly Shevchenko (1 June 2016), "In pictures: Ukraine removes communist-era symbols", BBC News
- ^ Service, RFE/RL's Ukrainian (19 May 2016). "Ukraine Renames Third-Largest City". RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. Retrieved 19 May 2016.
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- ^ a b Ukraine's law on 'decommunisation' does not comply with EU standards – Venice Commission, OSCE/ODIHR, Interfax-Ukraine (19 December 2015)
- ^ (in Ukrainian) Захарченко мріє захопити і перейменувати декомунізовані міста Донбасу (Zakharchenko wants to capture and rename decommunizated cities of Donbas), Ukrainska Pravda (25 February 2016)
- ^ ""Ленін створив сучасну Росію, а не Україну". Історики про скандальну промову Путіна". BBC News Україна (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 4 March 2022.
- ^ a b Out of Sight, The Ukrainian Week (28 December 2015)
- ^ Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance(16 January 2017)
- ^ Kharkiv "never had eastern-western conflicts", Euronews (23 October 2014)
- , SQ (3 February 2015)
- ^ (in Ukrainian) Decommunisation in Zaporizhzhia, from Lenin "fashioned" Orlyk, Ukrainska Pravda (13 June 2017)
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External links
- Interactive map of settlements that need to be renamed (in Ukrainian)
- Results decommunisation in the Donetsk oblast 2015-2016, pdf (05/01/2016)[permanent dead link] (in Ukrainian)