Communist Party of Ukraine

History

Early years and electoral successes

The KPU considers itself to be the direct successor to the original Communist Party of Ukraine, a branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) which was founded on 5 July 1918 in Moscow. The original communist party existed until 30 August 1991, when the CPSU and its branch in Ukraine were banned. Between 1991 and 1993, several small communist organizations were created throughout Ukraine. "Without clear legality", communists from all over Ukraine convened on 6 March 1993 for the All-Ukrainian Conference for Communists in an attempt to reestablish the KPU. In reaction, the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) legalized the establishment of communist parties two months later. On 19 June 1993, the 1st Congress of the newly founded KPU was convened. Officially, it was designated as the 29th Congress to denote it as a direct successor to the Soviet KPU and it elected Petro Symonenko as First Secretary.

In the 1994 presidential election, the KPU supported the candidacy of Oleksandr Moroz from the Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU). The relationship between the KPU and SPU was strong throughout the 1990s, with Moroz even speaking to the 22nd KPU Congress (held in 1999).

In the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary election the party gained 24.65% of the vote and 123 seats, becoming the largest party in Parliament. The first ten members on the party list were Petro Symonenko (MP), Omelian Parubok (MP), Anatoliy Nalyvaiko (tunneler of the Karl Marks Mine (Yenakieve)), Borys Oliynyk (MP), Valeria Zaklunna-Myronenko (actress of the Lesya Ukrainka Theater (Kyiv)), Adam Martynyuk (the 2nd secretary of the Central Committee of CPU), Anatoliy Draholyuntsev (mechanic-electrician at Luhanskteplovoz), Vasyl Sirenko (Koretsky Institute of State and Law (NANU), unaffiliated), Borys Molchanov (tool craftsman at Dniproshyna) and Anatoliy Strohov (pensioner). The KPU won 121 seats, constituting 19.5% of the seats in the Verkhovna Rada.

The good result in the 1998 election led the KPU to field their own candidate in the 1999 presidential election as they nominated party leader Symonenko. Symonenko received 23.1 percent of the votes in the first round, trailing behind Leonid Kuchma who received 38,0 percent of the votes. In the second round Symonenko received 38,8 percent, losing to Kuchma who received 57,7 percent of the vote.

In 2000, two parties split from the party, namely the Communist Party of Ukraine (renewed) and the Communist Party of Workers and Peasants. The KPU argued that the creation of parties was encouraged by President Leonid Kuchma in order to syphon votes away from their party.

Electoral decline

Symonenko's support sharply declined at the time of the 2004 presidential election. Symonenko received 5% of the votes and came in fourth place, unable to get into the controversial runoff which caused the Orange Revolution.

Since then, the party lost much support, particularly after the Orange Revolution. In the 2006 parliamentary election, the party won 3.66% and 21 seats. The first ten members on the party list were Petro Symonenko (MP), Adam Martynyuk (MP), Ivan Herasymov (MP), Kateryna Samoilyk (MP), Omelian Parubok (MP), Valeria Zaklunna-Myronenko (MP), Oleksandr Holub (MP), Valentyn Matvyeyev (MP), Oleksandr Tkachenko (MP) and Petro Tsybenko (MP).

No later than 2006, the Communist Party office in Donetsk on regular basis provided material and logistical assistance to the separatist organization Donetsk Republic (banned in 2007) which with the assistance of the Communist Party was spreading printed information materials of separatist orientation in authorship of the ideologist of Donetsk internationalism Dmitriy Kornilov as well as by collecting signatures for "independence of Donbass" agitated for violation of territorial integrity of Ukraine through seceding several oblasts of Ukraine from Ukraine and uniting them into one quasi state formation based on Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson "republics". Even after the Donetsk Republic Party was banned for separatism on 6 November 2007 by the Donetsk district administrative court on the suit of the Chief Justice Administration of Donetsk Oblast based on materials of the Security Service of Ukraine, the Donetsk branch of Communists did not cease to assist separatists with its tents and printing capabilities periodically conducting joint campaigns with them.

In the parliamentary election on 30 September 2007, the party won 5.39% of the popular vote and 27 out of 450 seats. The first ten members on the party list were Petro Symonenko (MP), Yevhen Volynets (tunneler of the Vasily Chapayev Mine (Shakhtarsk)), Maryna Perestenko (Head of the Mars farm (Simferopol Raion)), Ivan Herasymov (MP), Yuriy Haidayev (Minister of Healthcare, unaffiliated), Adam Martynyuk (1st deputy Chairman of parliament), Valeriy Bevz (Deputy Minister of Emergencies), Oleksandr Tkachenko (MP), Oleksandr Holub (MP) and Ihor Aleksyeyev (MP). The party participated in the 2010 presidential election as part of the Election bloc of left and central left political forces.

Ukrainian Revolution

From November 2013 until February 2014, there were large protests throughout Ukraine. They were sparked by President Yanukovych's sudden decision not to sign the political association and free trade agreement with the EU, instead choosing closer ties to Russia.

The Communist Party of Ukraine opposed the protests, but did not support Yanukovych. In January 2014 the party supported the anti-protest laws that severely restricted freedom of speech and the right to protest. In January and February 2014, clashes in Kyiv between protesters and Berkut special riot police resulted in the deaths of 108 protesters and 13 police officers.

On 22 February 2014, Ukraine's parliament voted 328–0 (about 73% of the parliament's 450 members) to remove Yanukovych from his post and to schedule an early presidential election for 25 May. The thirty deputies of the Communist Party voted for his removal.

In February 2014, the party came out in firm opposition to the violence and identified the protest movement as a "coup" to overthrow the elected government and replace it with a pro-NATO regime and in an open plea from the First Secretary called for all communist and left-wing movements around the world to condemn the events as such. However, the party did vote to remove Yanukovych.

During the Russo-Ukrainian war

Immediately after the revolution, pro-Russian, counter-revolutionary protests erupted in southern and eastern Ukraine. Russia occupied and then annexed Crimea, while armed pro-Russian separatists seized government buildings and proclaimed the independent states of Donetsk and Luhansk, sparking the Donbas war.

The Security Service of Ukraine gathered intelligence that the Communist Party of Ukraine had been helping the Russian proxy forces. In May 2014, Ukraine's Acting President, Oleksandr Turchynov, asked the Ministry of Justice to examine whether the party was involved in actions aimed at violating Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to take steps to ban the party if this is proven.

On 11 April, there was a scuffle in the Verkhovna Rada between KPU leader Petro Symonenko and two MPs from the far-right "Svoboda" party, after Symonenko blamed them for the Russian annexation of Crimea and the pro-Russian unrest. After repeatedly calling for calm, the parliament chairman suspended the session for fifteen minutes. On 6 May, a majority of MPs voted to expel the Communist Party from the parliamentary session hall for making a pro-separatist declaration.

In the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election, Symonenko initially again ran as a candidate of his party, but he withdrew from the race on 16 May. The Central Election Commission was unable to remove his name from the ballot because he withdrew from the race after the deadline of 1 May. In the election, he received 1.5% of the vote.

On 8 July, the Ministry of Justice asked Kyiv's District Administrative Court to ban the activity of the party as a result of "a large amount of evidence regarding illegal activities and illegal actions on the part of the Communist Party" (according to Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko). The Party of the European Left and the European United Left–Nordic Green Left grouping in the European Parliament condemned the possible ban and declared their solidarity with the KPU. Russia's State Duma denounced the ban too and said it was "an attempt by the new Kyiv authorities to force political and civil forces that do not agree with the path taken by the ultranationalist powers to shut up". The KPU also received solidarity from the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) in Britain.

Ideology

In its statute, the Communist Party claims that "on voluntary basis it unites citizens of Ukraine who are supporters of the Communist idea". The party considers itself a successor of the Communist Party of Ukraine of the Soviet Union and calls itself a "battle detachment of RKP(b)–VKP(b)–KPSS". The party claims that prohibition of that party in August 1991 was unlawful, which was confirmed by the decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine on 27 December 2001. The party sets itself in an opposition to any government and seeks a full restoration of the socialist state in the country without any particular association with any other political parties.

Program

Political sphere: liquidation of presidency as an institution, strengthening of democratic measures of state and public life; electoral legislation reform ensuring a proper share of representation of workers, peasants, intelligentsia, women, youth in Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and local government; introduction of practice to recall deputies and judges who received vote of no confidence; election of judges of prime level; filling with real meaning and proper financial support regional and local government; introduction in the country a system of public control; creation of labor group councils vested with powers to monitor economic activity of businesses; suppression of corruption, organized crime, particularly in the upper echelon of power; elimination of benefits and privileges for officials; federalization of Ukraine; comprehensive development of Ukrainian language and culture, granting Russian language the status of state language; changing of Ukraine's state symbol, lyrics and music of the State anthem.

Economic policy: modernization and public control over economy, nationalization of strategic businesses; establishing a competitive state sector of economy, energy independence; reforms in Agro-Industrial Complex, Housing and Communal Services, etc.; prohibition of private property.

Social sphere: liquidation of poverty, social justice, system of progressive taxation and state price regulation, free medicine, secondary and tertiary education; full compensation of deposits in the Soviet Savings Bank.

Spiritual sphere: quality youth politics; preservation of historical and cultural heritage including Soviet; increased punishment for distribution of narcotics, human trafficking, prostitution, promotion of pornography, violence; combating immorality, vulgarity, cynicism, national chauvinism, xenophobia, falsification of history, fascism, neo-Nazism, anti-Communism, anti-Sovietism; banning of neo-Nazi organizations in Ukraine, criminal penalties for acts of fascism; freedom of worldview and expression of faith, secular state.

Foreign policy: non-aligned military status, independent foreign policy, active position on creation of a new European system of collective security, reform of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, review international agreements with WTO and IMF, membership and active position in the CIS, Customs Union and Eurasian Economic Community of the Russian Federation, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Soviet legacy

The KPU was established as "the inheritor of the ideas and traditions of the KPU, as it existed until its banning in August 1991". In general, the party has laid weight on nostalgia for the Soviet Union to gain votes. In contrast to many parts of the former Soviet Union where leftist conservatives have tried to win votes by promoting local nationalism, the KPU supports a form of Soviet nationalism, considering the establishment of an independent Ukraine as illegal. The party has remained loyal to the legacy of the Soviet Union. In 1998, to celebrate the would-be 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union it published Historical Thesis, a text which painted a rosy picture of the former state. The Soviet Union is barely criticized and controversial events such as the Great Purge and Holodomor are not mentioned in the party press. There are some who are favorable to Joseph Stalin's legacy, giving the impression that things "only began to go wrong with [Nikita] Khrushchev's 'adventurism'". Despite all this, when the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) is criticized at all, the favored line is that the party and state lost their belief in key Leninist principles. Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union, "is still considered sacrosanct" by the party and official pronouncements talk of the "Leninist Communist Party of Ukraine" and more precisely that the KPU continues "speaking in the words of Lenin".

Symonenko has criticized the label of conservative on the KPU, stating that the party is not willing to abandon its own history. He has referred to the dissolution of the Soviet Union as "the tragic events of the recent past". Further, the KPU believes the Soviet Union "was criminally destroyed". The party believes that Ukraine has been living off the legacy of the Soviet Union since its independence. However, certain concessions to the present have been made and at the 2nd KPU Congress it was stated that "it would be utopian to try and revive a socio-economic system of different relations, which existed in different conditions, under different principles and different organizations of production and distribution, different social-class structures of society, a different level of consciousness".

Marxism

The party adheres and believes in the Marxian concepts of class struggle and historical materialism. Their ongoing belief in historical materialism cements their views that the socialist mode of production will still be the society of the future. It could be said that the party believed stronger than ever in the possibility of a socialist future since the "careerists", symbolized by Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk, were gone.

The KPU believes that since the West has developed into a post-industrial society, capitalism through globalization was actively "de-modernizing" Ukraine. This was in their favor since de-modernization would lead to the reestablishment of a dominant proletarian class. As Vasyl Tereshchuk, a former party theoretician expelled in 2005, noted: "People are surviving on what they accumulated in the years of Soviet power: that is, they are not yet a classic proletariat as they still have much to lose (a flat, a car, a dacha, etc.). But their full proletarianization will come sooner or later". Secondly, the dissolution of the Soviet Union directly led to the reestablishment of class antagonism in society. This antagonism led to the exploitation of the proletariat by "a comprador bourgeoisie ... behind which stands world imperialism headed by the USA". According to Symonenko, on this basis there was no chance for a social democratic movement ever to develop in Ukraine. The "softening of class antagonism in the West" which had led to the establishment of social democratic parties "was only possible because the local working class, as part of the 'golden billion', lived 'as parasites on the labour of the countries of the world periphery' to which Ukraine was rapidly being consigned. Ukraine could not expect any 'lessening of class

antagonism, only the reverse". Symonenko appreciates the economical aid and partnership with China and believes the party should emulate the Chinese Communist Party, in order to give the country back to the working class and "build our country into a strong country like China".

Views on nationalism

At least in the beginning, the party is best described as Soviet patriotic. As Yurii Solomatin, a member of parliament, noted in 2000, "we are Soviet communists; we are Soviet people; we are Soviet patriots". The party continues speaking about the existence of a "Soviet people" and "Soviet homeland" and at the beginning no concessions were given to local Ukrainian nationalism. There has been no talk of establishing a national communism unique to Ukraine and the 1st KPU Congress even criticized the notion of establishing a unique "Ukrainian communism". Instead, the KPU has opted promoting Ukraine as a "bi-cultural state". At the 1st KPU Congress, Symonenko told the delegates that "'the interests, rights and specific traits of one nation above those of other nations and nationalities', and in which 'the Ukrainian language' should not be 'over'-privileged, but left alone to enjoy 'its natural development, purged of the imposed language of the diaspora. The Russian language, as the native language of half the population of Ukraine, [should be given] the status of a state language alongside Ukrainian". Their views on patriotism is highly nostalgic. When the Union of Communist Parties – Communist Party of the Soviet Union (UCP–CPSU), a loose organization of post-Soviet parties was formed, it was met with open arms. However, when the Communist Party of the Russian Federation proposed in 1995 to transform the organization into a modern-day Comintern, the KPU opposed because of their Soviet patriotic views.

In recent years, their commitment to Soviet patriotism has been partially replaced with a vaguer Eurasianism. Wishing not to reestablish a union with Russia "as a protectorate of the Russian bourgeoisie", "the Ukrainian Communists have rediscovered the natural link from Soviet to East Slavic or Eurasian nationalism in the supposed common 'economic civilization' and proclivity for collective labour of all the East Slavic peoples". As noted in the party journal Communist, the "'Soviet man ... did not emerge from nothing before him stood the courageous Slavic-Rusich, the labour-loving Ukrainian peasant, the self-sacrificing Cossack". At the 4th KPU Congress, the party conceded that Ukraine would not join any particular union as long as it weakened the country's sovereignty. At the same time, Petro Symonenko publicly backed Ukraine's membership in the Eurasian Customs Union.

Symonenko has often been referred to as a Ukrainophobe, despite being of Ukrainian ethnicity. Symonenko made controversy in 2007 when he accused the Ukrainian nationalist figure Roman Shukhevych of receiving two Iron Crosses from Adolf Hitler. Shukhevych's children submitted a lawsuit against Symonenko in response. The Pechersk District Court of Kyiv city declared that Symonenko failed to present any proof of his claim and obligated "to refute the false information he spread about Roman Shukhevych at the next plenary session of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine after the court's decision enters into force".

Criticism

Writing on The Guardian, Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko described the KPU as a "conservative and pro-Russian group", whose leaders "became a part of the bourgeois elite and invited business support for their cause", pointing out that the richest deputy of the 7th Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (Oksana Kalietnik) was a member of the Communist faction. Thus, according to Ishchenko "the only things the party has in common with the determined Bolshevik revolutionaries of the past who spared neither themselves nor others are devotion to the Soviet symbols and appeals to empty 'Marxist-Leninist' phrases".

After the start of Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity, the party newspaper Komunist published an article comparing the protests to riots in Black ghettoes in the United States during the 1960s; the article, titled "White on the outside, black on the inside", stated that "at least in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco the police sometimes make raids on such places and simply kill a few rabid Negroes. [...] Even the dark-skinned vendors in Kyiv second hand shops seem a bit more civilized than our 'light-skinned brothers' from the western regions of the country, who have gathered on the Maidan". The article was widely condemned as racist.

Election results

Ministerial appointments

March–December 2007: Yuriy Haidayev Ministry of Healthcare (Ukraine) (second Yanukovych government)

Haidayev was officially unaffiliated, but he was on the party list to parliament from the Communist Party

Splinter parties

Communist Party of Ukraine (renewed)

Communist Party of Workers and Peasants

Communist Party of the Donetsk People's Republic