The Staffing Structure of Rehabilitation Departments for Victims of Political Repression Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Carpathian Military District / Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Western Region of Ukraine

Abstract

During the political and economic reforms carried out in the USSR between 1985 and 1991, the new political leadership launched a campaign for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression. In Western Ukraine, this definition encompassed part of the participants of the OUN–UPA resistance movement as well as members of the Sixtiers’ dissident movement. On April 17, 1991, the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR (government of Ukrainian soviet socialist republic) became the first among the union republics to adopt Law No. 962-XII, which regulated the process of rehabilitating victims of political repression on the sovereign territory of the republic.

It was envisaged that rehabilitated persons would have their property, which was confiscated by court order, returned to them, receive preferential calculation of pensionable service and other modest Soviet benefits, such as the priority installation of a landline telephone or membership of gardening societies for persons who became disabled as a result of repression as well as pensioners.

This led to a rapid increase in appeals from citizens (victims of repression and their heirs) to the offices of the prosecutor and state security. The paradox was that the very institutions responsible for carrying out the rehabilitation had themselves once been involved in the repressions. There was a catastrophic shortage of personnel, the cases—given the advanced age of many of those eligible for rehabilitation—could not tolerate delays, and the complainants showed understandable persistence.

As a result, positions for part-time prosecutors were introduced, which immediately led to numerous related problems. First, a part-time prosecutor had to be a qualified lawyer or, at minimum, a senior law student. Second, the salaries were meager and quickly eroded by rapid inflation. Consequently, those who agreed to work in the Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Carpathian Military District (later the Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Western Region of Ukraine) were mainly veterans of Soviet law enforcement agencies who, for the most part, had not been involved in investigative or prosecutorial work but rather in administrative or support roles.

In general, these individuals were not specialists in criminal law. Moreover, it can be assumed that some veterans perceived repressed members of the OUN and UPA as former enemies—this is evident from the wording in certain rehabilitation conclusions, where terms such as “UPA gangs” and “bandits” were used.

Using the example of the Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Carpathian Military District / the Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Western Region of Ukraine, the composition of part-time staff in the department responsible for rehabilitation was analyzed. It was concluded that, on the one hand, the rehabilitation work was carried out in accordance with the letter of the Law of Rehabilitation, but on the other hand, part-time prosecutors did not always seek to assist appellants, sometimes interpreting ambiguous provisions of the legislation arbitrarily.

For instance, during the research, a case was found in which a underaged participant of the UPA was charged with “murder” for taking part in a battle where one Soviet enforcer (punitive forces) was killed, despite the absence of sufficient evidence in the case.

The study also emphasizes the need to revisit certain rejection conclusions from 1991–1999, taking into account the 2015 Law of Ukraine “On the Legal Status and Honoring of Fighters for Ukraine’s Independence in the 20th Century” and the updated (2018) version of the Law on Rehabilitation.