Decommunization in Ukraine
Decommunization in Ukraine started during and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. With the success of the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, the Ukrainian government approved laws that outlawed communist symbols. On 15 May 2015, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed a set of laws that started a six-month period for the removal of communist monuments (excluding World War II monuments) and renaming of public places named after communist-related themes. At the time, this meant that 22 cities and 44 villages were set to get new names. Until 21 November 2015, municipal  governments had the authority to implement this; if they failed to do so, the Oblasts of Ukraine had until 21 May 2016 to change the names. If after that date the settlement had retained its old name, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine would wield authority to assign a new name to the settlement. In 2016, 51,493 streets and 987 cities and villages were renamed, and 1,320 Lenin monuments and 1,069 monuments to other communist figures removed. Violation of the law carries a penalty of a potential media ban and prison sentences of up to five years. On 24 July  2015, the Ministry of the Interior stripped the Communist Party of Ukraine, the Communist Party of Ukraine (renewed), and the Communist Party of Workers and Peasants of their right to participate in elections and stated it was continuing the court actions that started in July 2014 to end the registration of communist parties in Ukraine. By 16 December 2015, these three parties had been banned in Ukraine; however, the Communist Party of Ukraine appealed the ban, meaning the court's decision to ban the party did not come into force. The April 2015 decommunization law contains a norm that allows  the Ministry of Justice to prohibit the party from participating in elections. History. An unofficial decommunization process started in Ukraine after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the following independence of Ukraine in 1991. Decommunization was carried out much more ruthlessly and visibly in the former Soviet Union's Baltic states and Warsaw Pact countries outside the Soviet Union. Ukraine's first president after the country's 1991 independence from the Soviet Union, Leonid Kravchuk, had also issued orders aimed at "de-sovietisation" in the early 1990s. The following years, although at a slow rate, historical monuments to Soviet  leaders were removed in Ukraine; this process went on much further in the Ukrainian-speaking western regions than in the industrialised, largely Russian-speaking eastern regions. Decommunization laws were drafted in the Ukrainian parliament in 2002, 2005, 2009, 2011, and 2013, but they all failed to materialize. 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. 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 Dnipropetrovsk. On 9 April 2015, the Ukrainian parliament passed legislation on decommunization. It was submitted by the Second Yatsenyuk Government, banning the promotion of symbols of "Communist and National Socialist totalitarian regimes". 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". 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. The ban applies to monuments, place and  street names. The ban does not apply to World War II monuments and when symbols are located in a cemetery. Expressing pro-communist views was not made illegal. The ban on communist symbols did result in the removal 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 Dnipro. The city administration of Dnipro estimated in June 2015 that 80 streets, embankments, squares, and boulevards would have to be renamed. Maxim Eristavi of Hromadske.TV estimated late April 2015 that the nationwide renaming would cost  around $1.5 billion. 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). The same day, the parliament also passed a law that replaced the term "Great Patriotic War" in the national lexicon with "World War II" from 1939 to 1945, a change of great significance. On 15 May 2015, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed the Decommunisation Laws. This started a six-month period for the removal of communist monuments and renaming of public places named after communist-related themes. The Ukrainian decommunization  law applies, but is not limited to: The laws were published in "Holos Ukrayiny" on 20 May 2015; this made them come into force officially the next day. On 3 June 2015, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory published a list of 22 cities and 44 villages subject to renaming. By far most of these places were in the Donbass region in East Ukraine; the others were situated in Central Ukraine and South Ukraine. Under the "Decommunisation Laws" the municipal governments had until 21 November 2015 to change the name of the settlement they govern. For settlements that failed to  rename, the provincial authorities had until 21 May 2016 to change the name. If after that date the settlement still retained its old name the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine renamed the settlement. 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. 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. In October 2015, a statue of Lenin in Odessa was converted into a statue of "Star Wars" villain Darth Vader. 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. The party appealed this ban at the European Court of Human Rights. In March 2016, statues of Lenin, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Sergey Kirov and a Komsomol monument  were removed or taken down in the eastern city of Zaporizhia. The statue overlooking the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station (formerly named Lenin Dam) was the largest remaining Lenin statue in Ukraine. On 19 May 2016, the Ukrainian parliament voted to rename Ukraine's fourth-largest city Dnipropetrovsk to "Dnipro". The renaming of various locations was signed into the law on 20 May 2016. The Ukrainian parliament declared in July 2016 that the new names of places in Crimea, under full Russian control since the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, "will enter force with the return of temporarily occupied territory of the  Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol under the general jurisdiction of Ukraine." 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. Director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance Volodymyr Viatrovych stated in February 2018 that "De-communism in the context of depriving the symbols of the totalitarian regime has actually been completed". Although according to him the city of Kyiv was lagging behind. In February 2019, the Central Election Commission of Ukraine refused to register the candidacy of (leader of Communist Party ) Petro Symonenko for the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election due to the fact that the statute, name and symbolism of the Communist Party of Ukraine did not comply with the 2015 decommunization laws. Symonenko appealed the decision, but the court of appeal confirmed decision of the Central Election Commission of Ukraine. During the same month of February, it was announced that the oblast of Dnipropetrovsk would be renamed to "Sicheslav" in the future. On 16 July 2019, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine upheld the 2015 Ukrainian decommunization laws. On 7 November 2020 in the village , a coat of arms of the  USSR was dismantled from the facade of a school. On 27 April 2022, the 27-foot Soviet-era bronze statue under the People's Friendship Arch in Kyiv, representing Russian–Ukrainian friendship, was removed by order of Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko. Criticism. On 18 May 2015, the OSCE expressed concern that the laws could negatively impact the freedom of the press in Ukraine. The OSCE also regretted what it perceived as a lack of opportunity of civil society to participate in public discussions about the laws. 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". Russian lawmakers have argued (in April 2015) that it was "Cynical" to put Communist and Nazi symbol on par with each other, and pro-Russian rebels in Donbas (a region in eastern Ukraine) have condemned the law. The then head of the Donetsk People's Republic Alexander Zakharchenko stated in late February 2016 that when renamed cities "return under our jurisdiction", they would be renamed to their pre-decommunized name. On 18 December 2015, the Venice Commission stated that Ukraine's Decommunization Laws did not comply with European  legislative standards. It was in particular critical about the banning of Communist parties. In February 2022, in connection with a presidential address of Russian president Vladimir Putin in the midst of the Russo-Ukrainian crisis, Putin addressed the Ukrainian legal process of decommunisation that had begun in Ukraine in 2015, and extended the traditional definition of decommunization in Ukraine and said, "You want decommunisation? That suits us fine. But don’t stop halfway. We’re ready to show Ukraine what real decommunisation means for Ukraine." During the same speech, Putin had stated that Ukraine was a creation of the Bolsheviks , specifically blaming Vladimir Lenin for "detaching Ukraine from Russia". Results. Since 16 December 2015 three communist parties are banned in Ukraine (the Communist Party of Ukraine, Communist Party of Ukraine (renewed) and Communist Party of Workers and Peasants). The only party that appealed this ban was the Communist Party of Ukraine; this resulted in the court's decision to ban the Communist Party of Ukraine did not come into force. However, the April 2015 decommunization law contains a norm that allows the Ministry of Justice to prohibit the Communist Party from participating in elections. Ukraine had 5,500 Lenin monuments in  1991, declining to 1,300 by December 2015. More than 700 Lenin monuments were removed and/or destroyed from February 2014 (when 376 came down) to December 2015. On 16 January 2017 the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance announced that 1,320 Lenin monuments were dismantled during decommunization. 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. 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, Kharkiv, more than 200 streets, 5 administrative raions, 4 parks and 1 metro station had been renamed by early February 2016. In all of 2016 51,493 streets and 987 cities and villages were renamed, 25 raions were renamed and 1,320 Lenin monuments and 1,069 monuments to other communist figures removed. In some villages Lenin statues were remade into "non-communist historical figures" to save money. One of the most prominent examples was Lenin monument in Odessa, which was remade into the monument to Darth Vader. In February 2019, "The Guardian" reported  that the two Lenin statues in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone were the only two remaining statues of Lenin in Ukraine, if not taking into account occupied territories of Ukraine. In January 2021 ""Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty"" located three remaining Lenin statues in three (Ukrainian controlled) small villages. In January 2021, 24 Ukrainian streets were still named after former cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova (6 of them in parts of Ukrainian not under government control), according to the 2015 decommunization laws they should have been renamed. The last Lenin statue in Ukraine (excluding territories currently annexed by Russia or occupied by separatists ) was demolished in Stari Troyany, Izmail Raion, Odessa Oblast on 27 January 2021. Polling. A November 2016 poll, found that 48% of respondents supported a ban on Communist ideology in Ukraine, 36% were against it and 16% are undecided. It also found that 41% of respondents said they support the initiative to dismantle all monuments to Lenin in the country, whereas (48 percent) are against this and 11% are undecided. As of April 8, 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 Russia after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.