Legislating Communism Remembrance in Ukraine

In April 2015, the Ukrainian parliament adopted a package of “decommunization laws”. This research paper explores the meaning of these laws for national identity construction in Ukraine, and it analyzes political, public, and scholarly debates that this law has sparked (Shevel 2016, Himka 2015, Marples 2015). The theoretical framework of the study is embedded in understanding the connection between memory laws and the creation of collective identity. Previous studies have illustrated that many states adopted laws to regulate collective memory and to influence the formation of communal values. Such laws usually construct a specific historical narrative that serves as a point of identification for the whole of the nation. Yet this narrative often becomes contested by societal and political actors, who offer their own interpretations of a particular historical event and thus their own visions of a national community in which they live (Savelsberg and King 2007, Loytomaki 2014, Belavusau & Gliszczyńska-Grabias 2017, forthcoming).