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. The term 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. 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. 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 the Russian Supreme Court on 1 October 2008.
In the context of the former Soviet Union, and the Post-Soviet states, rehabilitation was the restoration of a person who was criminally prosecuted without due basis, to the state of acquittal. 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. 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. 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.
