Ukraine and Europe's Communist Memories

April 11, 2014 Topic: HistorySociety Region: Eastern EuropeEurope

Ukraine and Europe's Communist Memories

Putin is stirring up painful memories.

All three Baltic states, where security had been directly in the hands of the KGB, introduced bans on former operatives and those who collaborated with them from holding positions in parliament or government. In 1998, Lithuania expanded the range of the ban to private institutions (banks, communication enterprises, law firms, etc) with a new and more inclusive lustration law. The Estonian version, introduced in 1992, was called “Purge the Place.” Two years later, 73 percent of Estonian top officials had held their posts for less than three years.

Progress was closely monitored by Brussels. For example, in 1998, the EU committee for tracking action by the Czech Republic and Slovakia in the three Copenhagen conditions reported that both countries fell short on key issues. In the area of the judiciary and fundamental rights, the report found that for the Czech Republic “considerable efforts (were) needed,” and for Slovakia “further efforts (were) needed.” In the area of justice, freedom and security, both countries needed to make “considerable efforts.” And when it came to information and media, the report said the Czechs had a “very hard time” adopting to the EEC measures, and the Slovaks still needed to make “considerable effort.”

Lustration laws were controversial but generally served the purpose of keeping diehard Communists out of positions where they could subvert progress at a crucial time. Ukraine, which was not under the same pressure and did not introduce a lustration law, ended up with a shaky democratic system that failed to take hold, and was quickly undermined . (The presence of a large ethnic Russian population was an additional factor, but the Baltic nations also faced that problem). No doubt in an effort to improve its chances of eventual EU membership, Ukraine is now considering lustration laws. On April 1, for example, a European foundation organized a public conference in Kyiv on lustration laws and how they worked, with a panel of specialists from Poland, the Czech Republic, and Romania.

Reforming the Ukrainian judiciary is regarded as one of the biggest challenges—as it has been throughout Eastern Europe. Ambassador Poptodorova, who took part in Bulgaria’s membership negotiations with NATO recalled that when the NATO side observed that the Bulgarians needed to make more progress in that area, Bulgaria’s then new minister of justice, who was present said, “Let me describe what reforming the judiciary requires. Imagine a cemetery that can only be moved from one place to another with the help of those buried within it.”

Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary qualified for EU membership in 2004 and were admitted, with Bulgaria and Romania taking somewhat longer, until 2007. But not before another prod from Brussels to open the secret files to the public. Slowly institutions were set up to collect and sift through Communist-era documentation.

Poland founded the Institute of National Remembrance in 2000. The Czech Republic’s Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes came into being at about the same time, as did the Slovak Nation’s Memory Institute set up to sift through secret police files. Bulgaria’s monumentally named Committee for Disclosing and Announcing Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to the State Security and the Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian National Army was instituted by the Bulgarian parliament in 2006—days before its acceptance as a European Union member.

Twenty-five years later, the ghosts of Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” have still not entirely been laid to rest in post-Communist Europe. Last December, formation of a new Czech coalition government was held up when Andrej Babis, the billionaire leader of the Ano Party, was accused of having been a member of the hated Czechoslovak Communist secret police, the StB. The Ano Party (ano means “yes” in Czech), came in second in the October elections and without it no governing majority was possible.

Babis, who was born in Slovakia but became a Czech citizen when the two nations split in 1993, denied the charge, claiming that the secret police kept a file about him without his knowledge; but the Slovak Nation’s Memory Institute backed the allegations, and the Czech Republic’s still-in-force lustration law barred him from holding government office. Babis weathered the storm, and was appointed finance minister, but the issue raised questions whether the law had not outlived its purpose—that is, until Vladimir Putin’s action sharply put the clock back, inducing second thoughts.

Roland Flamini, a former TIME magazine correspondent, is a Washington-based journalist who writes about foreign policy.

Flickr/Santiago Medem. CC BY-SA.