Othering from within.the ideological function of ukrainian institute of national remembrancein 2015-2018

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Othering from within.the ideological function of ukrainian institute of national remembrancein 2015-2018

Mikhail Minakov

Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars



Abstract

This paper is dedicated to the study of how ideologies function in post-Soviet states which were created after the traumatic Soviet experience with its ideological monopoly. This study shows how the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance tried to revive the Soviet ideological practices in finding internal Other in post-Euromaidan Ukraine. The author argues that the Institute's policy was leading to creation of an ideological monopoly bestowing the ruling elites with commemorative control of Ukraine's diverse populations and their identities.

Key words: collective memory, ideological monopoly, institute of national memory, post-communism, post-Soviet state



Collective memory in post-communist and post-Soviet societies is the space of contestations, conflicts and struggle for power. New political identities emerge and enter into competition in the specific post-Soviet context where Soviet experience and relevant practices are being re-used for the purposes of new power elites and political systems. Peoples living after traumatic attempts of Utopia's realization in twentieth century made several brave attempts to build new states which would not be able to commit same terror towards its populations. However, the perestroika impulse to establish new political imagination and free political systems was fast vanishing (Hale 2016; Etkind & Minakov 2020). In the new political communities that were formed after the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc and USSR, the ideological changes are so rich and multidimensional that the new and old group memories start clashing with each other.

The post-Euromaidan Ukraine The German, shorter and earlier version of this study was published as “Die Umgestaltung des kollektiven Gedachnisses. Die ideologische Funktion des ukrainischen Instituts fur nationales Gedachnis in 2014-2017,” Porownania 1(24), 2019, 27-39. Here I refer to the post-Euromaidan period as a phase in the history of contemporary Ukraine that started in March 2014 and ending in summer 2019 when the power elites that came to power in 2014 were pushed out from the center of political life. provides a number of cases which demonstrate that the lessons learned by the late Soviet populations and precautionary norms that were engraved in early post-Soviet constitutions by founding fathers of Ukraine, Russia and other states of the region were forgotten. The prohibitions for ideological monopoly, censorship and other practices from the Soviet political toolkit For example, the authors of Ukrainian Constitution were explicitly prohibiting such practices in the Article 15. For more on constitutional creativity of early post-Soviet state founders please see: Minakov 2018: 33ff. were not respected anymore while such practices were coming back and used in state-building and political struggle. Ironically, in Ukraine, this this oblivion was often connected with the activity of an administrative organization responsible for collective memory-the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance.

In this study I make an attempt to review how post-Soviet authorities return to the practice of othering some part of its own population based on officially sanctioned ideology. In the case of post-Euromaidan, one of such groups was `sovok,' a derogatory term for people having nostalgic feelings to the Soviet past. In the context of war with Russian-backed separatists Donbas and in the face of Crimea's annexation by the Russian Federation, the meaning of the `sovok' -- with a number of new stigmatic terms -- was extended to much wider populations including those who was suspected in sympathies to separatists or who oriented towards cultural, political and ideological pluralism of post-Soviet pre-Euromaidan Ukraine. This internal Other was being accepted in Ukraine slowly and caused many conflicts in 2014-2019.

For example, on 24 May 2018 a small demarche was held by a group of Ukrainian marines in protest of president Poroschenko's inspection of their Naval Brigade. The president was in attendance for the introduction of a new uniform and military salute protocol. However, the soldiers refused to accept these changes because for them, their black beret and traditional salute--it was a matter of their military honor. As a result of their insubordination, the sailors were discharged from the military the same day (Fakty.ua 2018). For marines, the black beret was symbolic for Ukraine's independent armed forces. When the Soviet armed forces were reorganized into two separate forces -- one Ukrainian and one Russian -- on the Crimea in 1992, the marines took to wearing the black beret as part of their pledge to serve to Ukraine, not Russia. This was part of the armed forces' process of formulating a new set of military rituals including the watchword cry “I serve to people of Ukraine!” (Sluzhu narodu Ukraiiny).

After the 2014 Euromaidan resulted in a change of government, the new administration introduced a series of new symbolic and ideological innovations. A few of these clearly focused on collective memory and remembrance practices. Most of the events and symbols from before 2014 were to be reassessed. In the military sphere, it was not only matters associated with the Soviet Union that were to be replaced, but anything that wasn't in accordance with the new post 2014 state ideology. For example, not only did the soldiers now have to wear new uniforms, but they also had to use a new greeting “Glory to Ukraine” -- a watchword associated with the Ukrainian nationalist movement. This has actually given the rise to a contradiction of the marines and the president. On the one hand the president, who is also the commander in chief of the armed forces, cannot allow any act of insubordination to go unpunished. On the other, the “Black Berets” were obviously remaining loyal to the post-Soviet -- pre-Euromaidan -- Ukrainian order: they were faithful to their post-Soviet Ukrainian military oath and regimental traditions. Here one can see a dispute between two collective memory policies of post-Soviet origin, the pre- and post-Euromaidan ones. The insubordinate soldiers were remaining loyal to tradition that was founded alongside Ukraine's independence and contradicted to new policy stemming from post-Euromaidan ideological innovations.

The case with the marines is connected to the multitude of contradictions emerging from ideological transformation of political order in Ukraine after Euromaidan. In 2015, those groups who took power after Maidan introduced a new commemorative policy that they coined as “Decommunization Laws.” This same group also introduced new salutations and symbols, ones closely associated with the Ukrainian Peoples Republic (1918-21) and/or the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. This was happening simultaneously as the legacy of both Soviet (1917-1991) and post-Soviet (1991-2014) Ukraine was being condemned or forgotten. Accordingly, the historical narrative from the Soviet and post-Soviet pre-Euromaidan period were subjects to state categorization, modification, and control. However, the new contest for political commemorative control was still being disputed by different political groups and strata of population. In 2019 it has also resulted with the vast popular demand for the change of ruling groups and the vote for -- what was believed -- an antisystem candidate Volodymyr Zelensky (Kasianov 2019).

So, in this paper I will review the Ukrainian government practices of controlling collective memory of Ukrainian population, inasmuch as the efforts of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance has played in the ideological function of post-Maidan Ukraine. The main thesis of this paper is thus: the policy of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance was leading to creation of an ideological monopoly bestowing the ruling elites with commemorative control of Ukraine's diverse populations and othering those social groups that did not follow the official line. euromaidan post-soviet state monopoly

In order to prove this thesis, I will address the following issues in this paper. I will first offer methodological and conceptual frameworks to define the ideological function of collective memory. Second, I will review how post-Soviet states returned to use the ideological function of the collective memory after the break of USSR. And third, I will analyze the activities of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance between 2015 and 2019 and show which of them were adding to an attempt of establishment of the ideological monopoly in Ukraine.

The ideological role of collective memory

Memory is a complicated cognitive event which draws from situations and events that no longer exist. Every form of cognition is extraordinarily complex. But recollection, an act of memory, is even more complicated, as its subject matter no longer exists. It is for this reason that the memory is one of the oldest subjects of philosophical, logical, psychological and medical studies.

From epistemological point of view, memory involves three elements: the subject who is remembering; the act of remembering; and the object of the memory (for example an event that is contained in a memory or is being recalled by the subject). In the act of remembering, the subject takes the past no-more-existing event and remakes it in present time (Berek 2009; Olik 2007).

The subject engaging in the process of remembrance is actually a single individual. However, researchers who work with collective memory also occasionally make the mistake of directly transferring the individual capacity of memory into the collective act. There is evidence for this transfer, for example, in a recently published study conducted on European collective memory. The authors not only dealt with the memories of individuals, but also “collective, and corporate actors such as museums, political parties, or state administrations” (Gerhards etc. 2017: 18). Hundreds of academic books on history, sociology and political science operate on the metaphor that collective memory is derived from individual memories/recollections.

Without a doubt the metaphor for collective memory has a solid heuristic, as Paul Ricreur, Jan and Aleida Assmann, Maurice Halbwachs or Pierre Nora have demonstrated (Ricoeur, 1986; Assmann, 2006; Halbwachs, 1985; Nora, 2005). Their work helps us better understand culture, society, communities and institutions. The meanings of so-called “collective memory” are so diverse, that Jan and Aleida Assmann (2006) had to discern three different categories of memory: cultural, social and collective memory.

At the same time, it is important to emphasize: all non-individual forms of memory are not solely connected with past human experience, but they are too bound to contemporary imagination of the past. Social imagination uses these images of the past in order to establish barriers (i.e. between “us” and “them”) or to bind the allegiance of a population to the state or some other collective matter. This aspect of collective memory has been illustrated by Benedict Anderson (1991) and other scholars (e.g. Acquisti & Gross, 2007) with the metaphor “imagined communities.”

Here I would like to stress that the ideological function of collective memory comes from the structure of experience itself. As social phenomenology has shown us, experience is simultaneously individual and social, or rather intersubjective (Schütz & Luckmann, 2003; Berger & Luckmann, 1967). The intersubjective structure of experience goes deeper than the subject-object dichotomy and brings individual experience together with the four worlds: the-immediate-world-of-others (Unmwelt), the-world-of- contemporaries (Mitwelt), the-world-of-predecessors (Vorwelt) and the-world-of- successors (Nachwelt).

The the-immediate-world-of-others (Unmwelt) means a world where the individual is in direct contact with another; here one can reciprocate, come into direct interactions and participate in social activities. In the Umwelt, the meaning is always drawn from individual experience.

The the-world-of-contemporaries (Mitwelt) represents mankind, i.e. all those whom the individual could potentially come into contact with: those who are alive at the same time on earth, albeit at a geographic or social distance. Here, these distant contemporaries do not share any interactive experiences. One needs a form of media in order to learn about the other inhabitants of the Mitwelt. Therefore, the image of the

Other is oriented towards typecast expectations, these normally being subjected to strong social standardizations. So here, meaning is rarely based on personal experience but uses ready-made meanings present in collective imagination and language.

It is also highly relevant for our subject, that the social world-of-predecessors (Vorwelt) is neither directly nor indirectly reachable for any of us. All of the meanings for this world come from the past: they were once understood and are transferred to us through various forms of time-specific media. Therefore, the opportunity for intersubjective understanding in this world is starkly modified and is purely of collective nature.

Additionally, the fact that individual memory is only a small part of an experience is important to our topic. The majority of meanings contained in our experience are anonymous in their nature and genesis -- along with the typecast media of language, institutions etc. -- from the Mitwelt, Vorwelt and Nachwelt (Schütz & Luckmann 2003; Berger & Luckmann 1967). The memory, which is closely connected with the Vorwelt and Mitwelt, actually has little to do with past events.

This conclusion naturally does not imply that memory is not important. It is of great significance, but in a specific sense. All forms of collective memory serve ideological goals: to bring people together, to divide them, to mobilize them and to give their lives ideological content. Here I will draw from the ideology-theories provided by Clifford Geertz and Paul Ricreur, who have demonstrated the that ideology is ambiguous in principle. On the one hand, ideology organizes mankind into meaningful collectives, cultures, groups etc. On the other, it divides mankind and big groups into smaller groups and codifies their differences. Therefore, ideologies also present a change and a challenge to the mutual understanding of humankind (Geertz 1964; Ricoeur 1986).

Collective memories are, as we may deduce, always ideological constructs. This means that so-called national remembrance and collective memory (together with other ideological forms) participate in the accrual process of providing or restricting access to national resources and power centers. National remembrance and collective memory together form a collective identity, and in this way, they contribute to the decision-making process about which groups belong to a corresponding political society (or “political body” as Rousseau phrased it) and which ones are excluded. If a political system creates an institution and bestows it with the commemorative power of ideological typecasting, and furthermore assigns it to a specific powerful pressure-group, then we can recognize the risk of the creation of a new illiberal, authoritarian or even a totalitarian state.

Ideological Function of the State

Ideological function of the state is a tacit issue. Contemporary political scientists have come to some form of consensus, that there are four basic functions of the modern state. First: The monopoly of state control over the legitimate forces of power, which enables the control of a population in a specific physical territory. Second: This same monopoly also enables the maintenance of power and to defend those in power from external threats. Third: The state authority must be in the position to afford those under their control the required administrative and Legitimate Legal services. Fourth: The administration has a monopoly on taxation to create enough resources for fulfilling first three functions (Tilly 1992: 23 a.o.; Ghani & Lockhart 2008: 128 a.o.).

The ideological control over beliefs of citizens is absent from the list of necessary state functions. However, most modern states utilize some form of this control. Among the other governmental agencies, those who fulfill this unseen function are organizations such as the ministries of education and culture, state boards for media, film etc. and whole array of other state authorities. Correspondingly, a large amount of national resources is put at the disposal of the state's ideology and identity management services that tend to be invisible for citizens and scholars.

In extreme cases these ideological services have been openly manifest and have been placed at the disposal of ideocracies, as in Nazi Germany, the fascist Italy, the Soviet Union under Stalin, and post-revolutionary Iran. In these instances, the dominant ideology was always well articulated, and its monopoly was always enforced through certain institutions and practices.

Liberal states too practice ideological functions (Bell 2000; Dirilen-Gumu§ 2010; McCright et al. 2016). Yet here they mostly exist in an ideologically pluralistic system -- and safeguarded by various democratic institutions. In these societies there is a multitude of collective actors who participate in the production of ideological content. In the USA for example, the White House and Capitol Hill (the House) can be named alongside with the pop-culture of Hollywood, Wall Street as a financial power center, Madison Avenue with its advertising agencies, and the K-Street in Washington -- the seat of numerous think tanks and lobbyist groups (Bell 2000: 12ff; Schmidt 2002). Together all the entities produce ideological complexes specific to late consumer capitalism of the American kind. However, as long as the centers of ideological power remain diversified and antagonistic, there is little chance for the creation of an ideological monopoly in USA.

The post-totalitarian states with their traumatic historical experiences, in principle, try to prevent the re-establishment of an ideological monopoly (Etkind & Minakov 2020). Many post-Soviet states have clear constitutional stipulations that directly prohibit ideological monopolies and state censorship. For example, Article 15 of the Ukrainian Constitution reads:

“Social life in Ukraine shall be based on the principles of political, economic, and ideological diversity. No ideology shall be recognized as mandatory by the State. Censorship is prohibited. [...]” (Konstytutsia 2020).

Same provisions can be found in other post-communist constitutions and legal acts.

In this context the lustration institutions of the post-communist Central-European states served to play a significant role in the “treatment” therapy of national memories. Institutes (or centers or committees) started being founded in Czechoslovakia (1991-2) and ended their institutionalization in Lithuania (2000) (Portnov 2014). In those years such institutes served as power centers for attempting to deal with the recent past. They were expected, also when not explicitly told, to shape the collective memory with regard to the Communist regimes. They were commissioned to ensure the establishment of a new free collective future, and any individual, who was tainted by their criminal activity during the communist period, was to be removed from public life. Yet although it is not yet clear how efficient and therapeutic these institutes were, they undoubtedly helped in the process of post-totalitarian civic emancipation and democratic consolidation of populations in support for new state-building.

Still there is also a developmental curve of these institutions that started with the liberal mission but with time was actively adding to the spread of conservative ideologies and general illiberal turn in Eastern and Central Europe in 2010s (Agh 2016; Mink 2013; Freedom House 2018). These institutes played important role in giving the impetus for conservative and ethnonationalist trends in state- and nation-building processes. The interest in using collective memory policies was slowly moving from the communist trauma to constructing new post-communist/Soviet political bodies. And these construction processes were already bound by the orientation towards the past. Thus, the national memory institutes were adding to the illiberal turn of 2010s in the Eastern and Central Europe

Later, in the 21^st century, Ukrainian elites imitated the experience of the postcommunist neighbors and successfully created the Institute of National Remembrance in 2006 (Kasianov 2018). It was created at a time when totalitarian Soviet structures and elite groups no longer existed, and Ukraine had already transformed into an ideologically, politically, and culturally pluralistic country. In this context, the Institute had somewhat problematic goals to achieve: On one side it signaled the regime's claim to ideological hegemony, but on the other it was not explicitly clear how it would deal with the Soviet and Tsarist times' legacies.

By creating a state organization defining the memory politics, Ukrainian power elites have entered the area of potent temptation to use this instrument and return to the authoritarian practice of ideological monopoly.

The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance as an ideological instrument

The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance came from President Yushchenko's inspiration, and was established by the Ukrainian government in 2006 (Kabinet Ministriv Ukraiiny 2006). The administration, as the central executive authority, issued a decree laying out the following objectives for the institution:

• “To direct society's attention towards their own history and to spread pertinent objective information around Ukraine and the World.”

• “To recover, restore, and maintain the national memory of the Ukrainian people.”

• “To research the stages of the struggle to reestablish an independent Ukrainian state in the 20^th century, the history of the Ukrainian people, including all forms of repression.”

• “to commemorate the victims of the Holodomor and political repression as well as the participants in the struggle for national liberation.” (Ibid., 1-2)

President Yushchenko, and the group of intellectuals and politicians who supported him, had hoped that the institution would work on “objective Ukrainian history” and would systematically address the true Ukrainian collective identity. Georgii Kasianov, who has analyzed their expectations, writes that this group was expecting a massive “Ministry of Truth” (Kasianov 2018: 136). It is important to point out that the creation of the Institute took place without consensus from the greater society or the elite, rather a result of a political conjuncture. From the very beginning of the “Orange Revolution” those in power, who were at the peak of their dominance, exploited the political climate in order to try and turn their conservative and latently ethnonationalistic ideology into an ideological hegemony.

During the Yushchenko period the Institute focused on its major project with huge ideological importance: to expand the level of commemoration of the Holodomor. This project contained both historic and ideological elements. Academics from the institute examined archival documents in order to better understand the causes for and the consequences of the Holodomor. At the same time, the Institute was also responsible for public activities, and above all it focused on re-branding the Holodomor as not only as a Ukrainian tragedy, but as a genocide of the Ukrainian people. The Institute also began to prepare a book about Holodomor victims. This book was to be written as evidence to support President Yuschenko's thesis that and estimated ten million Ukrainians died as the result of a Soviet-state organized hunger campaign (Yushchenko 2009; Kasianov

2019) . This figure was `brought into the room' by politicians, and the academics and archivists had to find the evidence.

In 2010 the Institute was again the victim of a political conjunction. It was the only state institution that was liquidated by the new administration under president Yanukovych and was reinstated as a department within the cabinet of ministers (Kabinet Ministriv Ukraiiny 2011). It was reestablished as a research institution under the direction of the old communist intellectual Valery Soldatenko. Between 2010 and 2014 the Institute maintained a “low profile” (Kasianov 2018: 124ff). During this time researchers and academics could work with only minimal political oversight. Consequently, the institute played a nearly non-existent political and ideological role in Ukraine during these years.

The Institute's ascent to its pinnacle of power would come only after the 2014 Euromaidan. In July that same year, the Institute was again closed in the cabinet of ministers and again reopened as a separate state institution (Kabinet Ministriv Ukraiiny 2014a). It was given the following ambitious primary objectives:

• To research the process of Ukrainian nation building and to share the results with Ukraine and the world;

• “to commemorate the members of the Ukrainian liberation movement and the conflicts pretraining thereto, the victims of the Holodomor and political repression, the those who fought for independence, sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Ukraine including the participants of the Anti-Terror Operation”;

• “to cultivate patriotism, national self-consciousness and the active participation of the Ukrainian citizenry”;

• To research (Ukrainian) historical heritage (Kabinet Ministriv Ukraiiny 2014b)

These legal provisions transformed the Institute and its new director -- the ideologue, historian and activist Volodymyr Viatrovych -- into one of the most influential actors in Ukrainian revolutionary conservative politics in 2014-19. On the distinction between reactionary conservatism and revolutionary conservatism see: Umland 2017: 14ff. The qualities of revolutionary conservatism defined by Umland are applicable to the policies of the UINR under Viatrovych. This influence was already guaranteed through the adoption of the “Laws of De-Communization.” These so- called de-communization laws consist of four laws, which were approved by the Ukrainian Rada without any debate and despite protests from parliamentary legal experts and wider scholarly community (Kasianov 2018: 146). Under the many new norms established by these new laws, the following ideological statutes were included:

• The equation of Communism and National Socialism on equal footing as totalitarian “regimes” and the banning of their symbols;

• To award a special legal status to the fighters for Ukrainian independence in the 20^th century;

• The renaming of cities and streets;

• The introduction of new holidays and prohibition of the old ones (Law 2015a; Law 2015b; Law 2015s; Law 2015d).

These three norms, along with changes to the penal and administrative codes as well as specific implementation methods, gave the Institute the opportunity to establish an ideological monopoly in Ukraine. The function of symbolic control exercised by the institution can be compared with the practices of the Komsomol during the Soviet period. The Institute, the police, and activists affiliated with the Institute, have been monitoring the symbols and wording being used by Ukrainians at festivities and on social networks. In addition, the wearing of the black-orange St. George ribbon during the yearly celebrations commemorating Victory Day on May 9 has been banned and criminalized (see e.g. Zik.ua 2018). Another example affected a student at the National-Ivan-Franko- University in L'viv, who was penalized for having posted images of Marx and Lenin, snapshots taken from published books, on the internet (Hromadske Radio 2017). These facts show attempts of the Institute -- together with the other authorities and some loyal citizenry -- to practice the ideological monopoly.

Simultaneously, the use of symbols associated with National Socialism has received weak or little attention from the government or the institution. For example, in L'viv in April 2018, the festival dedicated to the Ukrainian SS-Division “Galizien” was held, where the participants wearing and or displaying Nazi symbols went unpunished (Hromadske Radio 2018). In addition, an exhibition was held a building belonging to the regional administration where children's drawings depicting the SS-Division were put on display (Zaxid.net 2018).

Even more of the Institute's energy and resources were devoted to the “de- communization” of cities and streets. More than 1,000 cities and villages were renamed or were reassigned their old pre-Soviet names (UINP 2018b). Behind the renaming there lies an ideological metaphysic, comparable to the Soviet praxis of naming cities and streets. A good example is the renaming of Artemvisk city because of its association with Artem, the founder of Soviet Ukraine. Now the city has been given its pre-Soviet name “Bachmut” back, as the name had neither a Tsarist nor Soviet connotation. However, the city of Kirovograd, named after a victim of a Stalinist conspiracy -- Sergei Kirov, was renamed against the will of its citizens to “Kropyvnytskyi.” Its pre-Soviet name -- “lelisavethrad” -- didn't appeal to the to the ideologues at the Institute: to them it sounded too Tsarist.

As the center of commemorative power, the Institute has sought to hold influence over other time periods. The Institute made serious efforts to modify and change national holidays and memorial days. Victory Day on May 9^th was deemed Soviet -- and therefore “foreign.” As an alternative, May 8^th was to be introduced as the new Day of Reconciliation and Mourning. The Institute promoted this date change to be part of a greater European holiday, whose symbol -- the red and black poppy -- fits perfectly with the color scheme of the “Ukrainian Insurgent Army.” In addition, May 9^th Victory Day and May 1^st Solidarity Day were declared to be non-Ukrainian holidays (Radio Svoboda 2017). The transformation of these holidays belonged to the Institute's central goals (UINP 2018a).

The Institute's yearly reports from 2016 and 2017 shows that events that took place in Ukraine during the 20^th century could easily be broken up into two categories, events that were “our own” and those that were “foreign.” Across time, the “our own” category began with the Kyivan Rus and followed a “native-thread” prominently featuring the Cossacks, the Ukrainian People's Republic, and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army to contemporary war-torn Ukraine. The Institute has held many public exhibitions illustrating this schema in Kyiv and in other cities (see Kruse 2017). This general scheme can now be found in secondary school books and at educational events (UINP 2018).

With reference to the space representing “our own,” it was filled with ethnic Ukrainians whenever or wherever something important happened. Therefore, you can find events on the Institute's website that took place not only in Ukraine, but also Russia, Poland, Canada, or Germany. At the same time, many events that took place in Ukraine have been filtered out of the national memory as they were associated with other ethnic groups living in Ukraine. The othering of those who “remembered” those events and who tried to make this memory public -- in mass media, social networks or through street demonstrations -- was othered and attempted to stigma of “people traitors” and “Kremlin agents.” This primarily pertains to the entire history of Soviet Ukraine, which has been classified as “non-native,” “not ours” and thus foreign. However, it also extends to the Russian Empire, the Soviet administration, and the “Red Army” along with Russian speaking Ukrainian authors and artists. They are no longer considered a part of Ukrainian “national history” and thus not worthy of public commemoration.

This very same principle of selective commemoration/co-oblivion comes straight from Soviet historiography into action -- however with the difference that here it is not class, rather the ethnonational character that is being brought to the forefront.



Conclusions

Whenever government makes an attempt to fulfill an ideological function, there is a risk for rights and liberties of citizens. Even those authorities that were specially established to fight the legacy of regimes based on ideological monopoly may function as organizations with the same functionality.

These examples coming from the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance and their ancillary events demonstrate the ideological role played by this state authority. In 2015-19 the Institute was attempting to subordinate the spatial and temporal structures of Ukrainian multiethnic diverse society to a series of ideological principles and thus creating internal others, stigmatized as enemies of state and people. These principles are strongly connected to conservative ethnocentrism, while ironically the Institute's methodology mimics Bolshevik monopolistic praxis of 1920ies. Their implementation was among the key reasons for impediment of the successful development of Ukrainian civil society, the protection of the country's cultural diversity, and to conduct an intra-Ukrainian dialog in the post-Euromaidan Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance -- at least until 2019 -- was being an organization for the filtering, control and modification of collective memory of Ukrainian populations. The direction of the Institution and its affiliated political groups were attempting to establish an ideological monopoly in Ukraine. This was leading to the othering, marginalization and neglect of many social, cultural, ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups. These activities and actions impeded the national dialogue, the chances for liberal democratization in Ukraine, and the progress toward integration into the European Union. And to a large extent they were causing -- among several other factors -- the radical change of the Ukrainian voters' moods in super-electoral 2019 year.



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