The Ukrainian left: In transition to social democracy or still in Thrall to the USSR?

THE STRONG PERFORMANCE of the Russian left in the December 1995 elections capped a string of similar come-back victories by communist successor parties throughout the former Soviet block between 1992 and 1995.1 In some states the successor parties were new-model social democrats, even neo-liberals (the Democratic Left Alliance in Poland, the Socialist Party in Hungary), some were only partially 'modernised', as with the Russian Communist Party. In most of East-Central Europe and in the Baltic states the new parties had dropped socialist internationalism to become national, even nationalist, parties of the left (Lithuania's Democratic Labour Party, Romania's Party of Social Democracy), but in Russia and Belarus they continued to dream of a restored USSR. This article seeks to examine the successor parties to the Communist Party in Russia's most important neighbour, Ukraine, where the left-wing parties have controlled the largest single block of seats in parliament since the 1994 elections. Unlike states such as Poland or the Czech Republic, however, profound ethnic, linguistic and regional divisions in Ukraine have made the 'nationalisation' and/or 'socialdemocratisation' of the left a more complex task. The article therefore first examines the historical roots of these divisions; it then considers the successor parties themselves (Socialists, Agrarians and Communists) and their performance as a relatively united 'Left Block' in the 1994 elections, before concluding with an overview of subsequent splits and realignments. The main thesis presented is that, while the Ukrainian left currently has a broader support base than the parties of the nationalist right, it has been increasingly riven by splits between 'stand-patters' and nationally minded would-be social democrats,2 which are likely to become even more prominent in the future as the tension between the 'legacies of the past' and the 'imperatives of liberalisation' grows.3