Establishing Guilt in Rehabilitation Procedures: Issues of Evidence Assessment in Light of Article 2 of the Law of Ukraine «On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression in Ukraine»

Abstract

The article provides a comprehensive historical-legal and criminal-procedural analysis of the grounds for refusing the rehabilitation of victims of political repression in accordance with Article 2 of the Law of Ukraine “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression in Ukraine.” The main focus is placed on the problem of establishing an individual’s guilt and assessing the totality of evidence in rehabilitation procedures, taking into account the requirements of Soviet-era criminal procedural legislation, primarily the Criminal Procedure Code of the Ukrainian SSR of 1960.

The methodological framework of the study is based on historical-legal, formal-legal, comparative-legal, and systemic-structural approaches, which made it possible to combine the analysis of rehabilitation legislation with a critical assessment of evidentiary practices formed within repressive judicial proceedings. The article examines the nature of the evidentiary base in criminal cases of the 1930s–1950s, in particular politically motivated cases concerning members of the OUN and UPA, and substantiates its systemic distortion resulting from the dominance of coerced confessions, interdependent interrogations, and materials produced by repressive bodies without proper verification of their reliability and admissibility.

The practice of drafting refusal decisions in rehabilitation cases is analyzed, demonstrating that such decisions generally lack a critical evaluation of evidence and an analysis of the conditions under which it was obtained. It is argued that the uncritical use of evidence formed within the framework of repressive judicial proceedings leads to the mechanical reproduction of Soviet evidentiary logic in contemporary rehabilitation procedures. The scientific novelty of the study lies in formulating an approach to assessing the totality of evidence of guilt in rehabilitation proceedings with due regard to the historical-legal context and the procedural standards in force at the time the relevant criminal cases were formed. As a result, the article substantiates the necessity of verifying the legality and reasonableness of refusals of rehabilitation as a prerequisite for achieving the objectives of rehabilitation legislation and restoring justice for victims of political repression.