Community of Values as a Key Factor of Decolonization

Abstract

The article deals with the problems of decolonization in Poland and Ukraine. The relationship between the moral-regulatory and functional foundations of the development of national communities in the process of eliminating colonization heritage is scrutinized. The authors endeavor to analyze the contrast between the two versions of decolonization embodied by the most active forces of social change in the two states: Solidarity and Maidan communities. These social groups act as bearers of certain intellectual and social visions of the future, representing certain historical and value markers. The article generalizes theoretical approaches related to Central European and Russian sociocultural influences relating to the formation of the values of freedom that conflict with the dimensions of clientelism and subjugation. The research confirms that Ukrainian society mostly neglects the heritage of Central European communities: communitarian social experience, solidarity, and social pragmatism. At the institutional and life-world (Lebenswelt) levels the values and principles that were extremely relevant during the events of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity and led to the overthrow of the Yanukovich colonial regime are currently ignored. On the contrary, Polish Solidarity can be considered a successful anticolonial community which through its powerful intellectual reflection and rethinking of the historical past has been able to offer society a valuable vision of change and to uphold its practical realization