Lustration as a Tool of Decolonization

• In Event: The Transition of Power in the Soviet Post-Imperial Space: Problems and Challenges after the Liberation

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to analyze the phenomenon of lustration in the context of decolonization and to demonstrate that lustration practices were connected closely to the decolonization process in Eastern Europe. Traditionally, various scholars saw the function of lustration practices as an important part of transitional justice and the national reconciliation policy. But lustration practices had another important function besides transitional justice and reconciliation. They served as the tool of decolonization by targeting members of the previous Communist elite such as Communist Party bureaucrats, lawyers, and university teachers, the people who were seen as agents of the Sovietization in Eastern Europe.

Author

• Yan Valerievich Vuks, U of North Texas