On the Rehabilitation of OUN-UPA Members: Historical and Legal Research. Part 1. From Beria's Amnesty in 1953 to the Declaration of Independence on August 24, 1991

This article constitutes the first part of a scholarly investigation devoted to the issues of the restoration of dignity and confiscated property, as well as the establishment of compensation and privileges for repressed participants of the Ukrainian Resistance Movement against the Stalinist totalitarian regime, namely members and sympathizers of the OUN-UPA. The matter concerns hundreds of thousands of individuals and an equally significant number of their potential heirs. The complexity of the problem is compounded by numerous endogenous and exogenous factors, including the psychological resistance of certain segments of Ukrainian society shaped by Soviet and Russian propaganda, the controversial international assessment of the historical role of the OUN-UPA (particularly the stance of the authorities of the Republic of Poland), and the scarcity of financial resources for property restitution and the provision of benefits to rehabilitated persons under the conditions of the ongoing war with the Russian Federation. The article demonstrates that the rehabilitation processes of 1953-1987 scarcely affected this particular group of the repressed. Those convicted by Soviet courts and extrajudicial bodies – rank-and-file «nationalists» (though not active leaders or senior functionaries) – fell under the scope of Soviet amnesties: prison terms were reduced to the time actually served, inmates were transferred to special settlements, and settlers were released. Yet genuine rehabilitation – understood as the full restoration of property and non-property rights together with the payment of corresponding compensation – was denied to this category. Only the so-called honest communists, particularly military personnel or party officials of the rank of S. Kosior, could count on rehabilitation, but not the participants of the armed Resistance Movement against Soviet authority. Following the removal of N. Khrushchev from power in 1964, the rehabilitation campaign was curtailed and was not resumed until the era of the so-called perestroika initiated by M. Gorbachev and certain of his associates. The article examines the principal legislative acts of the USSR and the decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that regulated rehabilitation processes during the Soviet period, offering their legal characterization and political evaluation. Particular emphasis is placed on the incomplete and ambivalent nature of Soviet practice.