THE CONCEPT OF LUSTRAATION AND THE PECULIARITIES OF ITS APPLICATION IN UKRAINE

Abstract

The article examines the essence of lustration as a political and legal mechanism for the protection of democracy. It was revealed that this phenomenon has been known to world his­tory since ancient times, but it received a modern meaning after the Second World War, when a number of European countries were in a state of overcoming the consequences of anti-dem­ocratic fascist and Nazi regimes. The complex political and legal nature of the concept of «lustration» is revealed, which is manifested in the need to find a balance between the protec­ tion of the principles of young democracy and the protection of human rights. The world ex­perience of conducting lustration and the most frequent mistakes made by states in this aspect are analyzed. International bodies and organizations, such as the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) and the European Court of Human Rights, play an important role in the mechanism of determining the criteria and principles of lustration. It is the established practice of these institutions that allows us to conclude that lustration in itself is not a violation of human rights, but acts as an effective mechanism for cleansing power from representatives of past anti-democratic regimes. Historical experience shows that only those states that passed through lustration and decommunization mechanisms got a chance to build truly democratic right-wing regimes. Ukraine, on the contrary, is a vivid example of a state that did not carry out appropriate proce­dures immediately after the overthrow of the communist regime, therefore, after almost several dozen years, it faced the same problems in a significantly larger volume. Also, the domestic experience of conducting lustration proved how ineffective the relevant mechanisms can be when the legislator does not take into account international standards in this field and the hast­ily adopted legislation contains a number of shortcomings, which include: lack of an individualized approach to responsibility, too wide a list of persons to whom it was distributed Law of Ukraine «On Purification of Power», lack of effective protection mechanisms, etc. As a result, such deficiencies in the legislation led to the recognition of unlawful state interference in the rights of persons to whom lustration was applied and the nullification of relevant efforts.