ANALYSIS: Symonenko warns of anti-Communist plot (02/27/00)

ANALYSIS

Symonenko warns of anti-Communist plot

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

PRAGUE - In the February 17 issue of Komunist, Petro Symonenko warned his comrades from the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) about the "anti-communist hysteria" in the country.

According to the CPU leader, the "anti-popular regime" of President Leonid Kuchma is seeking to deflect public attention from the looming economic catastrophe through "provocative campaigns and actions."

One such campaign, Mr. Symonenko noted, was launched late last year in western Ukraine (Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Ternopil and other regions), where "the oblast councils, which are subservient to nationalist leaders, began to manufacture resolutions banning the activity of Communist [local] organizations."

Another anti-Communist move was the submission to the Parliament of a draft law by 10 Rukh deputies banning the activities of the CPU in Ukraine. Mr. Symonenko said the draft law on banning the CPU is un-constitutional, while the accusation of the 10 Rukh deputies that the CPU "intended to overthrow and liquidate the existing state system" during the presidential election campaign is "mendacious."

Why do nationalists behave in so hostile a manner toward Communists in world history? Because, Mr. Symonenko explained, nationalists are "nothing more than paid lackeys of foreign and domestic capital." As for Ukrainian nationalists, they are especially notorious for their "servility and mercenariness" as well as for their "zoological [sic] hatred of Communists," he noted.

In Mr. Symonenko's opinion, the most perfidious "anti-Communist plot" by "servants of the ruling regime" is the recent attempt to split the CPU and create a Ukrainian Communist Party (UCP). Mr. Symonenko commented:

"The aim of this subsequent provocative undertaking is obvious. This pseudo-Communist, overtly pro-Kuchma party intends to deceive some of the uninformed people, while taking advantage of their pro-Communist views.

"This pseudo-communist party intends to split the leftist electorate and help the bloc of rightists and nationalists gain victory in the upcoming referendum and [early] parliamentary elections. There is another obvious goal in the provocative venture to create the UCP: to deliver a blow to Communist ideology.

"They are trying, as did the ideological predecessors of today's UCP proponents - UCP activists of the 1920s, to ingrain in some Communist supporters the idea that it is possible to pursue 'national communism.' This idea simultaneously implies that today's CPU - which consistently defends its class, internationalist positions, the only correct positions that guarantee our success - allegedly is not a party that defends the national interests of the Ukrainian people and Ukraine's statehood."

Jan Maksymiuk is the Belarus, Ukraine and Poland specialist on the staff of RFE/RL Newsline.

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