In 2014, Soldatenko was appointed by then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych as the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, a decision which proved controversial due to Soldatenko's support for the Soviet Union and denial of the Holodomor as a genocide.

After the Ukrainian Revolution, Soldatenko was forced to resign from his post, and since then, he has been a chief researcher at the I. F. Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnonational Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Valeriy Soldatenko was born on April 13, 1946, in Selydivka (now Selydove in Donetsk Oblast).

In 1984–1988, he headed the Department of Historical Experience of the CPSU of the Kyiv Higher Party School.

[3] Prior to his appointment, he had been involved in drafting the new programme for the Ukrainian Communist Party.

In 2014, following the Revolution of Dignity, Valery Soldatenko was forced to leave the post of director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, and Volodymyr Viatrovych became his successor.

In 2015, he became co-chairman of the Left Opposition coalition, however this group was suspended in 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.