Ukrainian Institute of National Memory

The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINM, Ukrainian: Український інститут національної пам'яті, romanized: Ukrainskyi instytut natsionalnoi pamiati), also translated as the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, is a central executive body operating under the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.

Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance

Headquarters at 16 Lypska Street [uk], Kyiv
Formation	31 May 2006
Purpose	Legal, educational
Headquarters	Kyiv, Ukraine
Location	Lypska Street, 16a
Official language	Ukrainian
Director	Oleksandr Alfiorov
Website	uinp.gov.ua

The Law of Ukraine "On the principles of state policy in respect to the national memory of Ukrainian people", which was adopted 21 August 2025, defines the institute as a central executive body with a special status, which provides the formation and realization of memorian policy.^[1]

History

Established on 31 May 2006 as a special organ for the restoration and preservation of national memory of the Ukrainian people, from 2006 to 2010, the institute was a central governmental institution with a special status, while from 2010 to 2014 a research budget institution.

On 9 December 2010, the UINR was discontinued by a decree issued by Viktor Yanukovych and on the same day the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine created the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance as a research institution instead, within the budget from the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.

On 25 March 2014 the institute was headed by Volodymyr Viatrovych, former head of the archive of the Security Service of Ukraine, who had been responsible for declassifying KGB archives. Viatrovych was removed from his post on 18 September 2019.^[2]

On 4 December 2019, after a selection process involving 17 candidates, the institute was headed by Anton Drobovych, former head of educational programs at the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center.^[3] Under his leadership the institute created a consultative centre dedicated to the search of information about victims of repression.^[4]

Directors

Old logo of the institute from 2014

• Ihor Yukhnovskyi, from 22 May 2006 to 18 July 2010.^[5]
• Valeriy Soldatenko, from 19 July 2010 to 24 March 2014.
• Volodymyr Viatrovych (Ukrainian: Володи́мир В'ятро́вич), from 25 March 2014 to 18 September 2019.^[6]
• Alina Shpak as acting director, from 18 September to 4 December 2019
• Anton Drobovych (Ukrainian: Антон Дробович), from 4 December 2019 to 13 December 2024.^[7]
• Yuliia Hnatiuk as acting director from 21 December 2024 to 27 June 2025
• Oleksandr Alfiorov, from 27 June 2025.

Decommunization of Ukraine

In May 2015, President Petro Poroshenko signed four laws concerning decommunization in Ukraine. The institute's director Volodymyr Viatrovych was involved in the drafting of two of these laws. The criminal sentences imposed by these acts and their phrasing came in for criticism within the country and abroad. The law "On access to the archives of repressive bodies of the communist totalitarian regime from 1917–1991" placed the state archives concerning repression during the Soviet period under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance.^[8]

Archive

Logo of the Branch State Archive of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory

A special law creating the Branch State Archive of the Institute of National Memory was adopted on 21 May 2015. In June 2019 the archive was registered as a legal entity and moved to its premises in a building earlier used by the National Bank of Ukraine.^[9] In 2021 the archive became a member of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience.^[10]

Criticism

In 2015, David R. Marples initiated an open letter addressed to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, calling on him not to sign the so-called anti-communism law and the law honoring the “heroes of the nation”. This letter was signed by numerous historians involved with Ukraine like Omer Bartov, Mark von Hagen, John-Paul Himka and Per Anders Rudling.^[11] In response, the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, Volodymyr Viatrovych, described the mass murders of Poles and Jews by Ukrainian nationalists as mere “individual opinions” and accused the signatories of spreading Russian propaganda. Poroshenko signed the law anyway.^{[citation needed]}

According to historian Georgiy Kasianov, the Institute of National Memory from 2015 was under control of Ukrainian nationalist forces, specifically Center for Research of the Liberation Movement. These forces, which were not popular in Ukraine and which never managed well in the national elections, suddenly received a significant instrument to influence Ukrainian education and politics. This influence was blown up by Russian propaganda and used as one of the pretexts of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.^[12]

According to Andreas Umland, the memorial policy promoted by the institute contributed to the weakening of Ukraine's international position. Mykola Riabchuk argued, that such views overestimate the importance of the institution, which doesn't possess a monopoly on the memorial sphere in Ukraine and de-facto operates on par with Ukrainian and foreign media and a large part of the population, which support anti-nationalist views.^[13]

See also

• Polish Institute of National Remembrance (Poland)
• National Memory Institute (Slovakia)

Bibliography

• Kasianov, Georgiy (2022). Memory Crash. Politics of History in and around Ukraine, 1980s–2010s (PDF). Budapest: Central European University Press. pp. 121–145. doi:10.7829/9789633863817. ISBN 978-963-386-381-7.
• Marples, David R. (2018). "Decommunization, Memory Laws, and "Builders of Ukraine in the 20th Century" (PDF). Acta Slavica Iaponica. 39 (1): 1–22.
• McBride, Jarred (2015-08-13). "How Ukraine's New Memory Commissar Is Controlling the Nation's Past". The Nation.
• Rudling, Per Anders (2021). "Managing Memory in Post-Soviet Ukraine: From "Scientific Marxism-Leninism" to the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, 1991–2019". Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society. 7 (2): 85–136.
• Umland, Andreas (2017). "The Ukrainian Government's Memory Institute Against the West. Band 2017". IndaStra. 2017 (3).