«Memory Law» in Ukraine as a modern phenomenon: general approaches, prerequisites of origin

Abstract

Introduction. The war of historical narratives is being waged on many levels and in diff erent planes – political, ideological, scientifi c, etc. At the state level, it is implemented as a tool of memory policy. Until a few years ago, the possibility, expediency and ethics of this struggle by legal means, in particular by legislative means, were subject to reasonable doubts. Today, commemorative laws are not only the subject of historiosophical debates about their ethics, but legal reality, moreover, the one of the main battlefi elds for competing historical ideologies and narratives. The aim of the article is to formulate an understanding of memory laws as an modern phenomenon, closely related to public policy in the fi eld of security, information and memory, in the fi eld of both internal and external relations. Conclusions. The duality of the essence of memory laws has caused the opposition of assessments of this phenomenon. One can hear that commemorative laws are an absolute evil, that they are a mask of populism and contribute to the liberalization of power and the erosion of fundamental democratic rights. At the same time, modern society exists in a determined world, and the strengthening of military activity of one state does not lead to the disarmament of others – on the contrary, we see an increase in military capabilities. If neighboring states regulate historical memory by law, this regulation is not limited to state borders, and therefore, in the absence of their own adequately protected historical narrative, they directly aff ect the historical memory of Ukrainian society as well, and therefore its identity. What should be the measures to protect identity from the aggressive infl uences of information policy – these questions are only before modern researchers and believe that they should be considered in the context of measures to protect against information infl uences in today’s globalized world and the information society as a whole. Key words: memory laws, memory politic, Ukraine.