KIEV, December 18. /TASS/. Ukraine’s parliament, Verkhovna Rada, has registered a bill imposing a ban on communist ideology propaganda in Ukraine, according to a post on the parliament’s website on Thursday.
The bill was initiated by Oleksandr Turchynov, the leader of the People’s Front faction and secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, and his deputies in the faction Serhiy Pashinsky and Viktoria Syumar.
No explanatory note has been provided.
In July 2014, Ukraine’s ministry of justice filed a suit with Kiev’s administrative court demanding a ban on the activity of the Ukrainian Communist Party. However on November 5, the Kiev court suspended consideration of this case until courts passed awards on the Communist Party’s suits to the ministry of justice and the State Registration Service.
Under the coalition agreement signed by representatives of five parties that won seats in the Verkhovna Rada in the October 26 parliamentary elections, the parliamentary coalition plans to ban any communist, Nazi, fascist and anti-Ukrainian propaganda in any manifestations. The document sets it as one of the goals to “finalize the process of de-communistization of all spheres of Ukraine’s public life.”
Meanwhile, a wave of violence against monuments to Soviet-era political figures swept the country. It was launched at the end of the last year by rightist radicals, who toppled the Lenin monument in central Kiev. By now, according to the Ukrainian Memory Institute, about 300 monuments to Lenin and about 70 monuments to other Soviet figures have been demolished across the country.