“A Decisive Step”

The Georgian parliament recently passed, in the first reading, a bill on lustration, entitled The Charter of Freedom. The bill provides for employment restrictions for former Soviet state security services personnel, as well as former top officials of the Communist Party and Komsomol. The document contains provisions for the establishment of the commission on lustration. The commission will also have the right to make decisions about removing Communist or Nazi symbols, buildings, monuments, street names or other propaganda items, as well as to keep register of such objects.

Yurii Shapoval, Ph.D. (History), professor:

“Saakashvili and Georgia’s current political establishment demonstrate with determination that they are distant from the values with which the current regime in Ukraine or the political regime in Russia are linked (or striving to be linked). Moreover, they flaunt this fact. This is a rather bold move, which indicates that Georgia draws the line with the past that was not at all romantic and rosy, as some forces try to assert in Russia, and, especially now, in Ukraine. This is a very important thing. Because what is happening in Ukraine brings to mind some phantasmagoric political theatre: former Komsomol organizers, Communist party members, ‘red directors’ are turning into capitalist monsters, latent oligarchs, with all the attributes of corresponding behaviour and life. And, worst of all, they do it with some obscure, completely irrational ideology, trying to combine Soviet values (as they concieve them) with benefits of so-called ‘capitalism,’ which we know is not capitalism, at least in the Ukrainian case.

“Clearly, lustration is needed in Ukraine. I wrote about it long ago, in the late 1990s, encountering misunderstanding and strange looks from my colleagues. Lustration can be done in various ways, not necessarily in some brutal, primitive, scandalous ways, although these would inevitably appear, of course. It requires political determination and understanding of the thing that I discussed previously: trying to move away from Soviet stereotypes. And, most importantly, lustration is a good reason to break with the ideology and the situation in which Ukraine finds itself. For now the government hates its native language, it calls some Ukrainians subhumans, does plenty of other things, demagogic and antidemocratic, that we are observing today. Lustration, I think, could be the instrument that would not allow for such people, for example, Dmytro Tabachnyk, to even emerge at high levels of administration. But nevertheless, all with one voice say lustration would cause some dramatic conflict, controversy and even some tragic features in our “peaceful” life. It would not. The question is, with what means and in the name of what cause would lustration be conducted. Until the government thinks this over, we will have incomprehensible philosophy and incomprehensible statehood, or, rather, semi-statehood, as in the present situation of Ukraine.”