Volodymyr Viatrovych

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, then headed by Volodymyr Viatrovych.

During that time he drew up the first course in Ukrainian higher education on “The Ukrainian Liberation Movement from the 1920s to 1950s” for students of the historical faculties of the Catholic University and the Ivan Franko Lviv University.

Speaking of The Rotation of Euromaidan activists he recalled the activities of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army or UPA: “In the 1940s and 1950s conditions in the underground were worse: people did not leave temporarily to go back to work, but because a comrade had gone forever.

That is why we shall succeed!” He also commented: “We do not intend to halt after the regime has changed in Ukraine, when we have got rid of the rule of Yanukovych.”

Volodymyr Mykhailovych Viatrovych (Володи́мир Михайлович В'ятро́вич; born 7 July 1977) is a Ukrainian historian, civic activist and politician.

From 1994 to 1999 Viatrovych was a student at the history faculty of Lviv University (West Ukraine) where he specialised in Ukrainian history.

(He had already issued a book on the subject in 2001.)

Viatrovych was the Director of the Center for Research of Liberation Movement in 2002–2010.

From November 2002 to March 2008 Viatrovych was director of the Centre for the Study of the Liberation Movement, based in Lviv.

In 2004 he defended his doctoral thesis: “UPA raids beyond Ukrainian borders as part of the creation of an anti-totalitarian national-democratic revolution among the nations of East-Central Europe”.

When the Orange Revolution took place in 2004 Viatrovych took an active part, supposedly as a leader of the PORA ("It's Time!") youth movement.

In 2005 and 2006 he lectured at the Ukrainian Catholic University.

From August 2005 to December 2007 Viatrovych was a research associate at the I. Kripyakevich Institute for Ukrainian Studies at the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv.

Between May 2007 and January 2008, Viatrovych was a representative of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance for Lviv Oblast.

In 2008 he served as research consultant to the international project, “Ukraine Remembers, the World Acknowledges” which aimed to popularise the subject of the Holodomor, the 1932-3 famine in Ukraine, and, through international lobbying, to gain world recognition that this was an act of genocide.

From January to October 2008 Viatrovych was head of the archives department at Ukraine's Institute of National Remembrance.

From October 2008 to March 2010 Viatrovych was adviser on research to Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the head of the SBU or Security Service of Ukraine (2006-2010).

Viatrovych was a moving force behind the idea of putting Stalin and other Soviet leaders of the time on trial for genocide for their part in the Holodomor.

From March 2008 onwards he has chaired the research council of the Centre for the Study of the Liberation Movement (Lviv).

Viatrovych has been a trustee of the Lontsky Prison National Museum-Memorial to the Victims of Occupation Regimes (Nazi and Soviet) in Lviv, since it was set up and opened to the public in 2009.

In 2010-2011 he worked in the US at the Ukraine Research Institute at Harvard University.

Viatrovych subsequently became director of the Center for the History of State-Building in Ukraine at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

They were found guilty in January 2010 by the Court of Appeal in Kyiv.

During the Euromaidan protests in 2013 Viatrovych called for active measures against the authorities.

He coordinated mass demonstrations and led a column of activists to block the government buildings and the parliament (Verkhovna Rada).

Viatrovych is a member of the board of trustees of the National Museum-Memorial of Victims of the Occupation Regimes "Loncky street Prison"" Museum. From 2008 to 2010, he was director of the Archives of the Security Service of Ukraine. In 2010-2011 he was senior visiting scholar at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, working in particular with the archival documents of Mykola Lebed. He was Director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance since 25 March 2014 until September 2019. As a historian, Viatrovych was criticized for whitewashing crimes by Ukrainian nationalists and whitewashing crimes and collaboration of SS Galizien and OUN with Nazi Germany. He was dismissed from his post in September 2019, with Anton Drobovych succeeding him.

On 25 March 2014 Viatrovych was appointed Director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance by the First Yatsenyuk Government.

In May 2015 President Petro Poroshenko approved four laws concerning Decommunization in Ukraine.

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.

According to the Jewish Policy Center, in 2017 Viatrovych described the Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevych as an "eminent personality" and defended the legality of the public display of the symbol of the Galician SS division.

In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election Viatrovych was number 25 on the election list of European Solidarity.

Since 3 December 2019, he is a member of the Ukrainian parliament.

In September 2019 the Honcharuk Government dismissed Viatrovych from the position of the Director.

In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election Viatrovych was number 25 on the election list of European Solidarity.

Only the first 23 candidates were elected.

But after Iryna Lutsenko gave up her mandate Viatrovych did replace her and he was sworn in as People's Deputy of Ukraine on 3 December 2019.

Number 24 of the election list European Solidarity, Nataliya Boyko, waived her right to enter parliament in favour of Viatrovych.

In the 2020 Ukrainian local elections, Viatrovych ran for the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast Council as the first number on the list of European Solidarity.

He did not take up his won seat.