Rehabilitation of Victims of Soviet Totalitarianism: Ukrainian and International Experience
Abstract
Abstract. The relevance of the article is determined by the need to compare and contrast Ukrainian, Kazakh, Georgian, Estonian and Polish legislation in the field of rehabilitation of victims of totalitarianism. It is important that for all post-Soviet countries, as well as states that fell into the so-called «Soviet sphere of influence» after the Second World War, the problem of rehabilitation of persons who suffered from the communist regime was implemented in different time frames, but with similar approaches. The purpose of the article is to analyze and compare national and foreign legislation that regulates the procedure for rehabilitation of victims of totalitarianism. The article uses a complex of scientific methods, namely: dialectics, hermeneutics, systemic, systemic-structural, sociological, cultural, as well as the principles of scientificity, comprehensiveness and historicism. Based on the results of the research, it was established that the content of the normative acts regulating the rehabilitation procedure for victims of totalitarianism is determined not only by the scale of repressions or crimes, but also by the degree of inclusion in the Soviet legal system. Thus, the laws of Poland, Albania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and even Moldova are aimed at solving specific episodes. In the case of Poland, it is exclusively the «Katyna tragedy», mass arrests in Czechoslovakia in the 1940s and 1950s. On the other hand, post-Soviet countries, in particular Ukraine, are characterized by an emphasis on constant terror and repression. Adopted in 1991, the Law «On Rehabilitation of Victims of Repressions of the Communist Totalitarian Regime of 1917–1991» chronologically covered the entire period of existence of Soviet power, and therefore opened up prospects for the disclosure of crimes of totalitarianism and the rehabilitation of victims. It was concluded that a common feature of rehabilitation laws is the existence of a norm on the rehabilitation of persons deprived of liberty under the so-called political articles of criminal codes. This refers to the procedure of full rehabilitation, not amnesty, including posthumous amnesty. Distinctive features of Ukrainian legislation from similar normative acts of post-Soviet countries are the emphasis on the fact of the genocide of the Ukrainian people, which took place during the Holodomor of 1932–1933. The provisions formulated in the article will contribute to the reform of national legislation, its alignment with the norms of international law and possible prosecution perpetrators of repression or a country that considers itself the successor of the USSR or the prevention of similar crimes in the future.
Keywords: criminal executive system; totalitarianism; repressed; rehabilitation; legislation; Ukraine; Kazakhstan; Georgia; Poland.
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