Decommunization

In the process of decommunisation, Ukraine has toppled all its Lenin monuments. This book documents the inglorious fate of these Soviet statues, following their often violent removal. Photographer Niels Ackermann and journalist Sébastien Gobert have scoured the country in search of the remains of these toppled figures. They are found in the most unlikely places: Lenin inhabits gardens, scrap yards and store rooms. He has fallen on hard times –  cut into pieces, daubed with paint, turned into a Cossack or Darth Vader. Yet despite every attempt to reduce their status, the monuments retain a sinister quality, resisting all efforts to separate them from their history.

Myroslava Hartmond's introductory essay puts Niels and Sébastien's journey across Ukraine into historical and global perspective, highlighting the uniqueness of the Leninfall phenomenon and the significance of their work in the context of post-Soviet studies.

160x200 mm hardback
176 pages
ISBN 978-0-9931911-7-6
Published in 2017

Purchase from publisher here:
http://fuel-design.com/publishing/looking-lenin/

The violent toppling of the Vladimir Lenin monument in Kiev’s Taras Shevchenko Boulevard on the 8th December 2013 was a dramatic moment in the Euromaidan Protests, widely televised across the globe. Over a hundred Lenin statues and Soviet monuments would face destruction in the year to come, well ahead of the official start of the decommunization process in April 2015. This forceful purging of the urban environment would become known as Leninopad, or Leninfall.

Although a common trait of regime overhauls, in the case of Ukraine, this particular episode divided public opinion at home at abroad. The statue was a rare example of Soviet monumental sculpture by Sergei Merkurov, fashioned of red quartzite – a rare and expensive stone, famously used for Napoleon’s tomb in Les Invalides. Indeed, the episode was as much an expression of rage against an enforced totalitarian past as it was a displacement of anger against Russian pressure on contemporary Ukrainian politics, and a statement of the Ukrainian people’s pro-European stance. Ukrainian writer Yurii Andrukhovych famously pointed to the regional differences in the treatment of the Lenin statue: virtually non-existent in the West of the country, unnoticed and unkempt relics in the central part, and garlanded lieux de mémoire in the Eastern regions.

I will examine the destruction of Communist memorials in the historical context, looking at the particular significance of memorials in the socialist urban environment. I will draw from interviews conducted with Ukrainian officials, activists, notable people in culture, as well as media coverage and debates. I propose to consider the Ukrainian case of decommunization within a comparative framework, looking at earlier examples of monument removals in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and South Yemen, as well as analyzing the treatment of Leniniana in the Russian Federation and Belarus, and media responses to Leninfall in Ukraine.

During the first two decades following the collapse of the communist regime, Romania has reckoned with the human rights infringements perpetrated from 1945 to 1989 with the help of a range of official and unofficial, judiciary and non-judiciary, backward and forward looking methods pursued by a variety of state and non-state actors. This article summarizes the progress registered to date in court trials, lustration, access to secret files, property restitution, truth commission, rehabilitation of former political prisoners, compensations to victims and their descendants, opinion tribunal, exhumations, rewriting history books, unofficial truth projects, and memorialization.

The violent toppling of the Vladimir Lenin monument in Kiev’s Taras Shevchenko Boulevard by far-right extremists on the 8th December 2013 was a dramatic moment in the Euromaidan Protests, widely televised across the globe. Over a hundred Lenin statues and Soviet monuments will face destruction in the year to come, well ahead of the official start of the decommunization process in April 2015. This forceful purging of the urban and rural environment of the Communist figurehead’s images would become known as Leninopad, or Leninfall. Although the toppling of statues of political figureheads is a common trait of regime overhauls, upon closer examination, the phenomenon of Leninfall presents a rather curious example of post-Soviet collective esoteric practice. The Mother Goddess archetype that is the Ukrainian landscape is liberated of the host of phallic columns that have sought to dominate it forevermore. The plinth, at once battleground and burial-ground, remains empty: what should replace the downcast idol?

Postcolonial theory has recently come under critique as an interpretative scheme applied to Eastern Europe and particularly Ukraine. However, a closer look suggests that the critique applies only to some aspects of the approach, such as a focus on power relations and representations, while the key question should be rephrased as whether the Ukrainian subject was constituted as a colonial subject. A range of empirical material from 1920s Ukrainian discourses, both Soviet and émigré, is analyzed to shed light on how Ukrainians constructed their subjectivity as “a site of disorder” (Dipesh Chakrabarty), splitting themselves into uncultured peasant masses to be modernized and erased as a voiceless subaltern subject, on the one hand, and modernizing elites, on the other. This split can be understood as an epitome of the colonial condition.

«Очищение власти» в Украине и ее одобрение Венецианской комиссией вновь актуализирует вопрос о люстрации и ее соотношении с международно-правовыми обязательствами государств в области защиты прав человека и
принципом верховенства права. В статье рассмотрены основные спорные аспекты люстрации с точки зрения практики международных механизмов защиты прав человека (механизмы Международной организации труда,
Европейский Суд по правам человека, Европейский комитет по социальным правам) и рекомендаций международных организаций (Управление верховного комиссара ООН по правам человека, Парламентская ассамблея
Совета Европы и Венецианская комиссия), показаны противоречия и проблемы применения документов, претендующих на значение международных стандартов в области люстрации. Сделан вывод о нецелесообразности применения к люстрации принципов и терминологии, заимствованных из института юридической ответственности.

Transitional justice in the post-communist countries of  Eastern Europe concentrates on the problem of the lustration of former secret service officers and their clandestine collaborators and on the question of access to files created by the communist political police. The aim of the article is to present the Polish experience in this field in view of the theoretical framework available in transitional justice literature. Thus, the text begins with definitions of some basic notions connected with dealing with the past. The article also proposes three basic models of transitional justice. The third part offers an account of Polish lustration and public disclosure measures and assigns those instruments to the models of transitional justice. The final section presents some concluding remarks on the evolution of Polish lustration.                                                                                                            [Adam Mickiewicz University Law Review, vol. 3, 2014]

The article reviews the modern state-of-art of historical memory in Chechnya.
It is also described the impact of the Soviet past and the conflict to the religious
and social spheres of the Chechen society, which was radically changed as a result
of perestroika and military operations in 1994–1996 and 1999–2000. The role of
belonging to the teip of Nohchmahkahoj tukhum during the period of military actions in
the republic is considered. Specific cases of renaming and dismantling of architecture
and infrastructure objects were both touched during the military stages of the conflict
and after the conflict’s official end. A particular importance is given to reflection of the
deportation of the Chechen and Ingush people in 1944 in historical memory, as well as its
relationship with the post-Soviet reality in the North Caucasian republic.

Ukraine’s infamous decommunization legislation, enacted in May 2015, may be less divisive than it initially appeared. The laws ban positive public expression toward the Soviet past and mandate the renaming of thousands of localities with Soviet-era names. Critics have said that the laws will prohibit open discussion of Ukraine’s complex history and may deepen societal divisions. Thus far, however, the process has not led to any sizeable protests, and parties that vocally opposed the laws have not been able to convert their stance into any actual mobilization. At the same time, there is no evidence of widespread support for decommunization within society, with the reasoning being more economic than ideological. In the end, Ukraine’s decommunization efforts may turn out to have a modest yet significant effect: the successful shedding of the Soviet symbolic legacy.

Although both Hungary and Ukraine experienced the peaceful fall of Communism, the two countries chose different approaches to transitional justice. In post-communist Hungary, state authorities confronted injustices perpetrated in the past. In Ukraine, after the collapse of the USSR, old Soviet apparatchiks stayed in power and decided not to ‘open old wounds’ of the communist regime. The two approaches to the post-communist transitional justice could hardly be more different. Hungary introduced lustration of previous communist officials and commemorated victims of political persecutions shortly after the regime change in 1989. Ukraine has waited almost two decades to do the same only after massive protests during the so-called ‘Euromaidan’ in 2014. Although both countries still face ongoing transitional challenges, this paper will argue that Hungary confronted the communist past from the very beginning of its democratic transformation as opposed to Ukraine, where such an encounter with its Soviet legacy was delayed until the major social uprising. With this in mind, the main goal of this paper is to offer three criticisms of measures that have been recently introduced by the government of Ukraine in the course of an ongoing transition from communist totalitarianism to a democratic society.

Ustawy lustracyjne, które uchwalone zostały niemal we wszystkich krajach byłego bloku wschodniego, były pierwotnie postrzegane jako środek nadzwyczajny, konieczny w fazie konsolidacji systemu demokratycznego. Ponad dwadzieścia pięć lat po tranzycji zasadne wydaje się zadanie pytania, na ile podobne mechanizmy można uznać za uzasadnione w realiach stabilnej demokracji. Analiza krajowego ustawodawstwa, orzecznictwa polskiego i zagranicznych sądów konstytucyjnych oraz literatury sprawiedliwości tranzycyjnej prowadzi do wniosku, że polska lustracja, widziana jako narządzie klaryfikacji historycznej, nadal może promować istotne wartości, takie jak przejrzystość życia publicznego, prawdę o przeszłości czy wymagania etyczne konieczne dla pełnienia funkcji publicznych. Tym niemniej, upływ czasu powoduje, że konieczna jest okresowa ewaluacja konieczności dalszego stosowania mechanizmów lustracyjnych oraz rozważenie, czy możliwa jest ich taka modyfikacja, by proces ten w mniejszym stopniu ograniczał prawa osób weryfikowanych.

Książka stanowi kompleksowe ujęcie problematyki rozliczeń z przeszłością, w przebiegu których młode demokracje mierzą się dziedzictwem naruszeń praw człowieka dokonanych przed momentem fundamentalnej zmiany ustrojowej z polecenia bądź za przyzwoleniem poprzedniego ustroju. Wśród metod owego rozrachunku wymienić można procesy karne, komisje prawdy, lustrację, ujawnianie archiwów służb specjalnych, zakaz pełnienia funkcji publicznych przez określone kategorie osób, amnestie i zadośćuczynienia. Publikacja, korzystając z dorobku poznańskiej szkoły teorii prawa oraz poznańskiej szkoły metodologicznej, przedstawia w sposób modelowy mechanizmy rozrachunku z przeszłością i czynniki wpływające na ukształtowanie się określonej formy owych rozliczeń. Scharakteryzowano w niej też aksjologiczne podstawy owych rozliczeń, w tym wartości, jakie przyświecają różnym metodom tego rozrachunku. Opis ten wzbogacony jest licznymi przykładami historycznych procesów przezwyciężania przeszłości. Rozważania o charakterze opisowym umożliwiają autorowi sformułowanie kilku postulatów, co do właściwego sposobu rozliczeń z przeszłością. [M. Krotoszyński, Modele sprawiedliwości tranzycyjnej, Poznań 2017; http://www.press.amu.edu.pl/pl/nowoci/item/4130-modele-sprawiedliwo%C5%9Bci-tranzycyjnej.html]

Książka stanowi kompleksowe ujęcie problematyki rozliczeń z przeszłością, w przebiegu których młode demokracje mierzą się dziedzictwem naruszeń praw człowieka dokonanych przed momentem fundamentalnej zmiany ustrojowej z polecenia bądź za przyzwoleniem poprzedniego ustroju. Wśród metod owego rozrachunku wymienić można procesy karne, komisje prawdy, lustrację, ujawnianie archiwów służb specjalnych, zakaz pełnienia funkcji publicznych przez określone kategorie osób, amnestie i zadośćuczynienia. Publikacja, korzystając z dorobku poznańskiej szkoły teorii prawa oraz poznańskiej szkoły metodologicznej, przedstawia w sposób modelowy mechanizmy rozrachunku z przeszłością i czynniki wpływające na ukształtowanie się określonej formy owych rozliczeń. Scharakteryzowano w niej też aksjologiczne podstawy owych rozliczeń, w tym wartości, jakie przyświecają różnym metodom tego rozrachunku. Opis ten wzbogacony jest licznymi przykładami historycznych procesów przezwyciężania przeszłości. Rozważania o charakterze opisowym umożliwiają autorowi sformułowanie kilku postulatów, co do właściwego sposobu rozliczeń z przeszłością. [M. Krotoszyński, Modele sprawiedliwości tranzycyjnej, Poznań 2017; http://www.press.amu.edu.pl/pl/nowoci/item/4130-modele-sprawiedliwo%C5%9Bci-tranzycyjnej.html]

One hundred years since the October Revolution, countries that were affected by the Communist regime are tasked with curating an unwieldy bulk of monumental propaganda. Among them, the serialized image of Lenin. I propose to undertake a comparative study of the different ways in which post-Soviet states dealt with Lenin statues following the dissolution of the USSR, in order to contrast their distinct visions of a national narrative after Communism. In Russia and Belarus, many statues remain visible in urban and rural centres. In Hungary, Poland, and Lithuania ‘memorial parks’ are ticketed dumping grounds that attract tourists and display the absurdity of the relics. In Germany, statues were literally buried... only to be disinterred for a major museum display. In Ukraine, the recent phenomenon of Leninfall sees hundreds of Lenins destroyed at the hands of activists in the wake of escalating conflict. By performing this exercise at the nexus of anthropology and archaeology, I intend to demonstrate that the quintessence of a country’s attitudes to a difficult heritage is evident in the way it handles the visible remains of that political regime in the public space.

The diverse fates of the Lenin statues present a series of poetic moments. In Berlin, a Lenin stands in the yard of a removals company. Off the coast of the Crimea, an underwater museum of sunken relics honours heroes of a bygone time. The violent toppling of the Lenin monument in Kyiv was a dramatic episode in the Euromaidan protests, triggers a wave of iconoclastic violence. Sergei Merkurov’s statue, which met with such a cruel fate during Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, was fashioned of red quartzite – a rare and expensive stone, famously used for Napoleon’s tomb in Les Invalides. In the months to come, hundreds of Lenins would fall across the country at the hands of activists, well ahead of the official start of the decommunization process in April 2015. Although the destruction of statues is a common trait of regime overhauls, Ukraine had gained independence from the Soviet Union over two decades prior to this, leaving the material remains of its Communist heritage largely untouched. This Leninfall was a symbolic attack on the past, embodied in the likeness of the Communist leader, a displacement of anger against a corrupt Ukrainian government and an expansionist Russian regime, and a statement of the Ukrainian people’s pro- European stance. By contrasting this example with other regional approaches, we can come to conclusions about the unique issues that Ukraine faces in dealing with its Soviet heritage.

The article reviews the modern state-of-art of historical memory in Chechnya. It is also described the impact of the Soviet past and the conflict to the religious and social spheres of the Chechen society, which was radically changed as a result of perestroika and military operations in 1994–1996 and 1999–2000. The role of belonging to the teip of Nohchmahkahoj tukhum during the period of military actions in the republic is considered. Specific cases of renaming and dismantling of architecture and infrastructure objects were both touched during the military stages of the conflict and after the conflict's official end. A particular importance is given to reflection of the deportation of the Chechen and Ingush people in 1944 in historical memory, as well as its relationship with the post-Soviet reality in the North Caucasian republic.

During the last four years the situation in Poland has been a matter of interest to the worldwide legal community mostly due to the constitutional crisis. Yet, the years 2015–2019 were also a time of a revival of transitional justice measures, such as cleansing the public sphere of communist symbols, remodelling of lustration law, and further reduction of pensions of communist secret service employees and officers. In this paper I argue that these spheres are interconnected and that Poland’s constitutional crisis has a transitional justice dimension. I start with an overview of retrospective instruments dealing with the communist past introduced in the last four years. Next, I turn to the constitutional crisis itself, discussing its possible explanations and transitional justice aspects. In the end I claim that the dramatic constitutional backsliding that Poland has recently experienced can be explained not only as a power grab, but also as a result of the tension between the rule of law and the principle of individual responsibility on one hand – and the resort to collective accountability in an attempt to get what the government sees as justice on the other.

This article analyses how three types of artistic memorialization of monumental socialist public works transform these into examples of socialist modernism in Eastern Europe. First, it tackles the issue of rendering socialist architecture visible through the Socialist Modernism online platform. Second, it focuses on the collection of documentary proofs by six documentary photography projects in Eastern Europe. Finally, it looks at how four contemporary artists in Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, and the Czech Republic are resignifying socialist art in their artistic practices. Analysed from a perspective of transnational cultural memory practices, these three artistic endeavours contribute to a shared approach to the monumental socialist public works in the region. I argue that some of these strategies lead to a unified, depoliticized, decommunized memorialization of the socialist art of Eastern Europe.

The article discusses the point of interconnection between historical policy and international human rights law standards on the example of a so-called decommunisation Act enacted in Poland in 2016 that reduces retirement pensions and other benefits to individuals who were employed or in service in selected state formations and institutions in 1944-1990, amending the Act adopted in 2009. The Act of 16 December 2016 is analyzed in the light of the standards of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), including relevant standards on coming to terms with the past as an element of transitional justice. The examination concludes that there is a discrepancy between the rationale for adopting this legislation in Poland, namely to reckon with the communist past and as such increase social trust in state institutions, and the legal solutions contained in the 2016 Act.

21 травня 2015 року в Україні набув чинності пакет «декомунізаційних законів». Вони охоплюють широкий спектр суспільних відносин: від увічнення перемоги у Другій світовій війні та визнання на державному рівні осіб, які боролися за незалежність України у ХХ столітті, до відкриття доступу до архівної інформації колишніх радянських спецслужб та засудження Україною комуністичного й нацистського тоталітарних режимів як злочинних та несумісних із основоположними правами й свободами людини і громадянина. У широкому сенсі ухвалення цих законів означає, що Україна зробила рішучий крок, спрямований на розрив із тоталітарним минулим та його злочинними практиками управління суспільством. Декомунізація не є українським винаходом. Досвід європейських країн проаналізовано в цій брошурі.

This article examines the politics of renaming streets as a symbolic form of decommunisation in Ukraine. The evidence suggests that political factors, or 'politics of the present', rather than structural factors, or 'politics of the past', explain the opposition to decommunisation since 2015. More specifically, two mutually necessary factors-the interaction among subnational veto players and the efforts of toponymic commissions-explain the opposition to the renaming of streets. Regions with a high number of subnational veto players and low engagement by toponymic commissions have shown a higher degree of resistance to the renaming of streets.

A new wave of de-communization has swept over Poland: streets and squares are re-named and monuments dismantled. In the cities and towns of northern and western Poland, that became Polish only after 1945, these measures are met with mixed feelings as they touch upon specific local memories of the post-war years. The article gives an insight into how local councils and citizens have struggled to comply with state history policy while also protect local historical identities.

W niniejszym tekście skupiam się na analizie wydarzeń i wypowiedziach liderów pamięci pochodzących z dwóch badanych przeze mnie społeczności lokalnych – z regionu Powiśla (powiatu kwidzyńskiego oraz sztumskiego) oraz Dolnych Łużyc (powiatu żarskiego oraz krośnieńskiego). Za ich pomocą chciałabym opisać interesujący styk pamięci – jednej, którą charakteryzuję jako wernakularna, specyficzną dla terenów postmigracyjnych oraz drugą, pamięcią tworzoną przez centralne instytucje pamięci. Ciekawi mnie dość peryferyjna pozycja wielu miejscowości Ziem Zachodnich w kontekście obchodów stulecia niepodległości. Trudności w dostępnie do finansowania, potrzeba wymyślenia i odszukania związków z Polską z okazji święta w 2018 powodowało, że wydarzenia upamiętniające odzyskanie niepodległości w 1918 roku na zachodzie i północy Polski przybrały szczególny wymiar. W tekście przyglądam się procesom, które nazywam kolonizacją pamięci lokalnej i strategiom oporu wobec niej ukazując, jakie role i pozycje przyjmują poszczególni aktorzy pamięci.
Wychodząc od nakreślenia sytuacji związanej ze świętowaniem stulecia odzyskania niepodległości przez Polskę, chciałabym zwrócić uwagę na szerszy problem, dotyczący styku pamięci lokalnej i narodowej, a sytuacje związane z obchodami11 listopada w 2018 roku są wierzchołkiem góry lodowej. Powołując się na dalsze przykłady – dyskusji nad rolą pamięci o Józefie Piłsudskim oraz problemom dekomunizacji w społecznościach lokalnych ukazuję homogenizującą rolę pamięci narodowej, która wywołuje opór lub konflikt.