Debata o dekomunizacji na Ukrainie w 2015 roku: jak politycy „wygrali” z intelektualistami

This article analyses the de-communization laws passed in Ukraine in May 2015 and the public debate they evoked. The author presents the circumstances in which the laws were passed and describes the thought processes of their drafters from the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance. Three discourses are distinguished in the debate: the expert, the national-liberal, and the deconstructivist. With the exception of representatives of the national-liberal discourse, the debaters were critical of the laws and expected either their rejection by the president or their fundamental amendment. In the end, however, the laws passed into force in their first version. Drawing conclusions from this failure of the participants in the debate, the author analyses the relations between the intellectual field and the political field in Ukraine and also the internal relations of the former—between its participants within the country and abroad. In conclusion, the author ponders the strategy that should be adopted by Ukrainian intellectuals for the purpose of increasing their influence on the decision-making of politicians.