Decommunization

Not to be confused with Lustration.
One of the manifestations of decommunization has been renaming streets. Before 2017, ulica Anny German in Poznań (Anna German Street) was named in honor of Julian Leński.[1]

Decommunization in former communist states is the process of purging former communist high officials and eliminating communist symbols.

It is sometimes referred to as political cleansing.[2] Although the term has been occasionally used during the Cold War,[3] it is most commonly applied to the former countries of the Eastern Bloc, those countries that were considered being close to the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union to describe a number of legal and social changes during their periods of postcommunism during the post–Cold War era.

In some states, decommunization includes bans on communist symbols. While sharing common traits, the processes of decommunization have run differently in different states.[4][5]

  1. ^ "German zastąpi działacza komunistycznego". radiopoznan.fm (in Polish). Retrieved 18 May 2018.
  2. ^ Jennifer A. Yoder (1999) "From East Germans to Germans?: The New Postcommunist Elites", ISBN 0-8223-2372-9,, pp. 95–97
  3. ^ The Current Digest of the Soviet Press. American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. 1968.
  4. ^ "Lithuanian ban on Soviet symbols", BBC News, 17 June 2008, retrieved 3 June 2016
  5. ^ Shevchenko, Vitaly (14 April 2015). "Goodbye, Lenin: Ukraine moves to ban communist symbols". BBC News. Retrieved 3 June 2016.