The Russian aggression against Ukraine is heavily influenced by the memory of World War II (WWII), used by the Russian Federation as a consolidation tool to mobilise Russian society for the fight against a “neo-Nazi Ukraine”. Since 2014 Russia has adopted a set of legislative initiatives aiming to preserve a government-prescribed narrative about the exceptionally heroic role of the USSR in WWII and prohibiting any other interpretation under the threat of criminal and administrative sanctions. Both laws are using the decision of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) as a reference point to justify and legally substantiate such an interpretation, as the USSR was one of “victorious” nations which rendered justice against the Nazis in 1946. This article aims to show how the IMT rulings have been turned into an instrument of Russian propaganda and which lessons can be learned for the future of international tribunals, as well as examines the overall Ukrainian quest for Russian accountability.

Given the whole spectrum of doubts and controversies that arise in discussions about laws affecting historical memory (and their subcategory of memory laws), the question of assessing them in the context of international standards of human rights protection – and in particular the European system of human rights protection – is often overlooked. Thus this article focuses on the implications and conditions for introducing memory laws in light of international human rights standards using selected examples of various types of recently-adopted Polish memory laws as case studies. The authors begin with a brief description of the phenomenon of memory laws and the most significant threats that they pose to the protection of international human rights standards. The following sections analyse selected Polish laws affecting historical memory vis-à-vis these standards. The analysis covers non-binding declaratory laws affecting historical memory, and acts that include criminal law sanctions. The article attempts to sketch the circumstances linking laws affecting historical memory with the human rights protection standards, including those entailed both in binding treaties and other instruments of international law.