THE POLITICS OF LUSTRATION IN UKRAINE AND POLAND (COMPARATIVE STUDY)

Abstract

Summary The aim of this paper to analyse politics of lustration in Ukraine and Poland based on national and international lustration legislation. The main feature of lustration in Poland is that it was “soft” – it did not provide for the removal of a deputy's mandate or the dismissal of former functionaries of the communist regime, but only for their acknowledgment of work in state security bodies or their tacit cooperation with such bodies and only when a person submitted false information or concealed facts about such work or cooperation, they were dismissed from office with a ban on further holding responsible state positions for up to ten years. Lustration in Ukraine is analysed for compliance with the international legal acts on lustration and preliminary results are summed up following the declared objectives. lustration in Ukraine was one of the toughest in Europe. The main peculiarity of lustration in Ukraine is its introduction immediately and not soon, but almost a quarter of a century after the collapse of the communist regime and its application primarily to political rivals (officials and officers of the Yanukovych regime), rather than functionaries of the former communist regime.