Political rehabilitation

Political rehabilitation is the process by which a member of a political organization or government who has fallen into disgrace, is restored to public life. It is usually applied to leaders or other prominent individuals who regain their prominence after a period in which they have no influence or standing. Historically, the concept is usually associated with Communist states and parties where, as a result of shifting political lines often as part of a power struggle, leading members of the Communist Party find themselves on the losing side of a political conflict and out of favour (often to the point of being denounced or even imprisoned) as a result.

These individuals may be rehabilitated either as a result of capitulating to the dominant political line and renouncing their former beliefs or allegiances to disgraced leaders, or they may be rehabilitated as a result of a change in the political leadership of the party, either a change in personnel or a change in political line, so that the views or associations which caused the individual, or group of individuals, to fall into disgrace are viewed more sympathetically.^{[citation needed]}

Well known figures who have been rehabilitated include Deng Xiaoping who fell into disgrace during the Cultural Revolution for being a "third roader" but was rehabilitated subsequently and became paramount leader of the People's Republic of China; and Russia's last Tsar, Nicholas II, and his family, who were all shot dead by Bolshevik revolutionaries in July, 1918, but were rehabilitated by Russia's Supreme court on 1 October 2008.

In the Soviet Union

In the context of the former Soviet Union, and the Post-Soviet states, rehabilitation (Russian: реабилитация, transliterated in English as reabilitatsiya or academically rendered as reabilitacija) was the restoration of a person who was criminally prosecuted without due basis, to the state of acquittal. Rehabilitation used in this way is a linguistic false cognate for the Russian term reabilitatsiya.

Rehabilitation of the victims of Soviet repressions

Mass amnesty of the victims of Soviet repressions started after the death of Joseph Stalin. Initially, in 1953, this did not entail any form of exoneration, and the amnestees were released into internal exile in remote areas, without any right to return to their original places of settlement. The amnesty was applied first for those who had been sentenced for a term of at most 5 years prosecuted for those articles in the Soviet Criminal Code that were not political (for example children of those repressed on political grounds were often prosecuted as "antisocial elements", i.e. on the same grounds as prostitutes). The regular release of political prisoners from Gulag labor camps started in 1954. This release became coupled with rehabilitations after Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalinism in his 1956 speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences. Several entire nationality groups that had been deported to Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia during population transfer were rehabilitated in the late 1950s.

Many of those groups were also allowed to return to their former homelands, and many had their former autonomous regions restored, but some did not (e.g., Volga Germans and Crimean Tatars). In most cases, the persons were released with the phrases "due to the lack of a criminal matter" and "based on previously unavailable information". Some were released "due to the lack of a proof of guilt". Many rehabilitations occurred posthumously. Many cases were subject to amnesty only, but not to rehabilitation (in particular those who were prosecuted for "belonging to Trotskyite Opposition").

Both the modern Russian Federation and Ukraine have enacted laws "On the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repressions", which provide the basis for the continued post-Stalinist rehabilitation of victims.