Community of Values as a Key Factor of Decolonization

Özet

The article deals with the problems of decolonization in Poland and Ukraine. The relationship between the moral-regulatory and functional founda-tions of the development of national communities in the process of eliminating colonization heritage is scrutinized. The authors endeavor to analyze the con-trast 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 gener-alizes theoretical approaches related to Central European and Russian socio-cultural influences relating to the formation of the values of freedom that con-flict with the dimensions of clientelism and subjugation. The research confirms that Ukrainian society mostly neglects the heritage of Central European com-munities: 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 Dig-nity and led to the overthrow of the Yanukovich colonial regime are currently ignored. On the contrary, Polish Solidarity can be considered a successful anti-colonial community which through its powerful intellectual reflection and re-thinking of the historical past has been able to offer society a valuable vision of change and to uphold its practical realization.