POLITICAL BLOC PROFILE: The Communist Party of Ukraine

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

During the 2006 parliamentary election campaign, The Ukrainian Weekly will profile the leading political blocs. This week's installment features the Communist Party of Ukraine.

KYIV - About 20 percent of Ukrainians voted for the Communist Party of Ukraine in the 2002 parliamentary elections.

As widely predicted, that was the party's last stand.

This time around, Ukrainians will reduce the Communists' presence in the Verkhovna Rada to no more than 10 percent of the seats, a testament to the inevitable demise of an ideology that inspired the murder and displacement of tens of millions of Ukrainians.

When recently confronted with the brutal history of communism, leader Petro Symonenko asserted that his Communist Party is the only alternative to deal with economic hardship in a landscape of political parties that serve only the interests of wealthy businessmen.

"If you're going to talk about these or other tragic pages of our history, don't forget that 14 years of Ukrainian independence have brought significantly more poverty and suffering to our people than what is in our history," Mr. Symonenko said during a February 27 chat organized by the Russian-language Korrespondent, a Ukrainian news magazine.

The Communist Party has the support of 9 percent of the electorate, according to a January poll conducted by the National Institute for Strategic Research, a government agency that performs work for the president and his Secretariat.

According to the Western-financed Democratic Initiatives Foundation, about 4 percent of the electorate supports the Communist Party of Ukraine.

Party leaders

Mr. Symonenko has been Ukraine's Communist poster boy ever since he became the party's first secretary in 1993. The next year, the Donetsk native became a national deputy and leader of the Communists' parliamentary faction.

He's been a fierce political competitor ever since, having led a formidable campaign against Leonid Kuchma for the Ukrainian presidency in 1999, earning 38 percent of the vote.

Ukrainians recognize him most for his impassioned speeches in the Verkhovna Rada, where he is relentless in criticizing businessmen of any stripe for selling out Ukraine, either for their own personal gain or to foreign interests, such as multinational companies.

Interestingly enough, his son Andrii doesn't seem to care much for the writings of Marx or Lenin. He was an executive at Donetsk-based Promeconombank.

Second on the party list is Mr. Symonenko's long-time partner and right-hand man, Adam Martyniuk, who is the first vice-chairman of the Verkhovna Rada.

Russian-born Ivan Herasymov is third on the Communist Party's election list. The 84-year-old Mr. Herasymov was a Red Army general and has chaired the Organization of Ukrainian Veterans since 1991.

Fourth on the election list is Kherson native Kateryna Samoilyk, who chairs the Verkhovna Rada's Committee on Youth Politics, Physical Education Sports and Tourism. Prior to her political career, Ms. Samoilyk was a teacher of the Russian language and literature.

Omelian Parubok, who serves on the Verkhovna Rada's Committee for Agrarian and Land Policy, is fifth on the party list. He is a twice-selected Hero of Socialist Work.

Political strategy

The Communist Party of Ukraine traditionally had two bases of support: those who actually agree with the ideology and those who support close cultural and economic ties with the Russian Federation, said Oles Donii, a political expert who is ranked 96th on the Socialist Party's electoral list.

The Communists can blame the Party of the Regions for much of their decline, he said, because it has become the party of choice for Russophile Ukrainians and ethnic Russians in the last few years.

The other reason the Communists have slid in popularity is that their electoral base, pensioners and veterans, is gradually dying off, Mr. Donii said.

It goes without saying that the Communists have a strict pro-Russian orientation economically, culturally and politically.

The Communists also support returning all major industries to state control, as well as offering free medical care and education.

Mr. Symonenko pointed to the People's Republic of China as a successful model of a Communist state.

"We aren't interested in what will happen with Russia, we are thinking of what to do with China," Mr. Symonenko said in the Korrespondent online chat, paraphrasing Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Campaign strategy

The Communist Party has done little advertising in the way of billboards, television advertisements or street stands.

It has mostly retreated from central Ukraine, focusing its campaigning on the southern and eastern oblasts, where support for the party remains strong.

Pensioners, veterans and Russian sympathizers remain at the party's core electorate as few Ukrainians under age 30 have any interest in renewing communism in Ukraine.

The Communist Party has launched a few television advertisements that are strikingly mediocre compared to other campaigns. They are not only poorly produced, but they are also trying to appeal to two segments of the electorate that have no interest in the party: young people, and contemporary Ukrainian intellectuals.

The most prominent television ad quotes Pablo Picasso as to why he became a devoted Communist: "Through painting and color, I want to advance my understanding of people and this world in that direction in which this understanding makes us freer. My membership in the Communist Party is the logical extension of all my life and all my work."

Amidst Picasso's musing is a visual depiction of his artwork. The ad concludes with the slogan, "Geniuses think alike. Communist Party of Ukraine."

One of the stranger ads depicts a young weightlifter bench-pressing in a gym and successfully impressing two admiring women with his strength. At the end, it's revealed that the hunk is none other than a Communist.

"Their ads don't reflect their electorate," Mr. Donii said. "They're oriented toward young people with the message that voting for the Communists is cool. It's an unsuccessful strategy."

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 19, 2006, No. 12, Vol. LXXIV

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