“Goodbye, Rashka!” - Rada deputies, in honor of the “Vyshyvanka Day”, organized a purge of laws from mentioning the USSR
The Verkhovna Rada hastily adopted as a basis a bill on the de-Sovietization of Ukrainian legislation.
The deputies considered it symbolic in the first reading to support such an initiative precisely on “Vyshyvanka Day,” which is celebrated today in Ukraine, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We propose, firstly, to finally remove from the legislation of Ukraine any memories of the Komsomol, Soviet power and, most importantly, that we are no longer building Leninist communism, as provided for in the housing code of the Ukrainian SSR, which is in force today,” - explained Vice Speaker of the Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk.
"Looking into the hall (deputies in festive embroidered shirts - ed.), I think that today is the best time to begin the process of de-Sovietization of Ukrainian legislation. We are good at embroidered shirts, because embroidered shirts are the QR code of every Ukrainian. Let’s show that it is not only external, but also in the middle of each of us,” the vice speaker urged.
Next, Golos deputy Roman Lozinsky clarified what other terms need to be cleared from the legislation.
“There is a very good part in the bill - it is the cleansing of archaisms and the cleansing of Ukrainian legislation and our system from “workers”, “comrades” and so on. Those things that cannot take place in modern Ukraine, but must remain history,” Lozinsky said.
However, unexpectedly, the bill was harshly criticized by ex-President Petro Poroshenko’s Eurosolidarity party. They considered the very fact that this issue was being considered offensive.
“The Constitution provides for a completely opposite approach; acts are valid to the extent that they do not contradict the Constitution. How can one imagine that they are not in effect, and why in the additions mix both existing and long-abandoned acts? What does support for this law mean? What do we recognize that until 2021, the standards of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR were in force?” – the ex-director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, deputy Vladimir Vyatrovich, was indignant.
“De-Sovietization means writing and passing laws not in the Soviet way, but in the European way! I consider attempts to stop decommunization very bad, and even worse, attempts to imitate decommunization; this law is precisely such an attempt,” Vyatrovich condemned the ruling majority.
However, his concerns were not shared by another nationally-conscious deputy, Sergei Rudik.
“We must say once and for all – good-bye, USSR! Goodbye, Rashka! Goodbye, a period that led to the death of millions of Ukrainians. But we don’t forget about commas, periods and things that go beyond the scope of de-Sovietization, de-communization, we vote “for” in the first reading and significantly refine it in the second,” Rudik said.
As a result, the bill was adopted by 364 votes.
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