Red Poppy instead of Red Star
“De-Communisation” of Historical Culture in Ukraine
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
In April 2015, the Ukrainian parliament adopted four laws addressing the Communist legacy. Public monuments to Lenin and other Bolsheviks were removed, streets and towns renamed, the archives of the Soviet security organs opened. Memory is to be Europeanised. However, this objective is contradicted by the uncritical handling of the Ukrainian national movement, especially that of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists/Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which partially collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War and carried out massacres of the Polish population. It is still unclear whether state historical policy will displace the open debate within society over right and wrong tracks, discontinuities and contradictions in history, or will only complement and mirror it.
(Osteuropa 3/2016, pp. 59–77)