01/28/2002 | Augusto

SDPU(U) hijacks a long social-democratic tradition
Taras Kuzio


Ukraine has a historical tradition of social democracy going back to the early 20th century and including Mykola Mikhnovsky’s Revolutionary Ukrainian Party (RUP), Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s and Symon Petliura’s Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers Party, and the West Ukrainian Social Democratic Party. Based in eastern Ukraine, the RUP in 1900 became the first Ukrainian party to issue a manifesto calling for an independent Ukraine. The Central Rada and Directory of 1917-1920 were also dominated by socialists and social democrats, such as the doyen of Ukrainian historiography, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, whose statue now stands on Volodymyrska Street.

Heirs of Hrushevsky

Social-democratic groups began to re-emerge in Ukraine in the late 1980s with their main bases in Lviv and Kyiv. At first these social-democratic groups were a Russophone and leftist alternative to both the Communists and Rukh.

The first social-democratic program was released in the fall of 1989. Published in Russian, it drew criticism from Rukh for devoting too little space to the national question. At their inaugural congress in May 1990, Ukraine’s social democrats split into “left” and “right” factions. The “right” Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (SDPU) was anti-Communist and close to Rukh. Meanwhile, the “left” Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united) was critical of the “nationalist” Rukh and saw its constituency among the Russophone population. During the run up to the Dec. 1, 1991, referendum on independence, the SDPU(u) was the only political party to campaign for a boycott – as did some Romanian ethnic groups.

These two social-democratic parties were largely inactive during the first half of the 1990s. The economic crisis and the majoritarian election law of 1994 meant this was not a good time for the development of political parties in general. It was not until around 1995 that the former national communists began to seek to institutionalize their informal networks (labeled the “party of power”) within political parties.

In the second half of the 1990s Ukraine’s former Soviet elite was able to transform the political power they still wielded into economic power. Exploiting their influence to benefit from economic reform and privatization, they turned into Ukraine’s oligarch class.

This economic power was then converted back into political power. This was done either by taking over existing small parties established far earlier (such as the Greens, the People’s Democratic Party (NDP), the Democratic Party, Labor Ukraine and the SDPU(u)) or by creating new parties (Liberals, Agrarians, Democratic Union, Party of Regions of Ukraine).

One characteristic of all these centrist “oligarchic” parties – apart from the SDPU(u) – is their virtuality. They are the new home of Ukraine’s former Soviet elite, which abandoned any pretence of adhering to an ideology back in the Brezhnev era. This ideological amorphousness is reflected in their top-down structure, disinterest in seeking members, conflation with state structures in a corporate-type relationship, and the lack of congruence between their titles and their real backers and objectives.

“The Holding”

During the second half of the 1990s, the number of parties claiming to adhere to a social-democratic ideology increased dramatically. In 1996, the SDPU(u) was taken over by the clan of Viktor Medvedchuk and Hryhory Surkis, which controlled the Slavutych holding company and during the second half of the 1990s acquired influence over nearly all the state-owned oblast energy distribution companies (oblenergos). By the March 1998 parliamentary elections, the party’s election list also included former President Leonid Kravchuk. After leaving office, Kravchuk had headed an arts foundation whose main purpose was to monopolize the lucrative tax-free trade in imported alcohol and tobacco. In the words of one Ukrainian observer, the SDPU(u) became more of a “holding” than a real party.

While the SDPU(u) followed a path of loyalty to the Kuchma regime after it was taken over by the Medvedchuk-Surkis clan, its former leader Vasyl Onopenko went on to establish the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party. Onopenko’s USDP is now part of Yulia Tymoshenko’s opposition bloc.

The original SDPU, headed by Yury Buzduhan, is also in radical opposition. It cooperates closely with Oleksandr Moroz’s Socialist Party (SPU), which occupies the left-wing fringe of the pro-statehood parties in Ukraine.

The SPU, SDPU and USDP are closer to the spirit of Ukraine’s pre-Soviet social democrats and socialists than the SDPU(u), as seems to be recognized by the Socialist International, which has refused to recognize the SDPU(u) as its Ukrainian member, despite intense lobbying.

While Medvedchuk and Kravchuk have repeatedly described the aims of the SDPU(u) in such attractive terms as the creation of a new middle class, the rule of law, a “civilized” transition to a market economy, the upholding of democratic traditions and the overcoming of the economic crisis, party leaders and members have tended to behave in the opposite manner.

In an interview with Kievskiye Vedomosti in July 1998, Yevhen Marchuk, then a member of the SDPU(u), warned, “The Presidential Administration wants to make this party manageable.” This is just the arrangement the SDPU(u) agreed to. They went along with the “rules” of what Western observers of Ukraine refer to as the “blackmail state.” Corrupt business/political groups are allowed to flourish in return for loyalty to the executive. Meanwhile, the security forces collect compromising materials (kompromat) that may be used as grounds for corruption charges should this loyalty oath be broken.

Fall from grace

By late 1999, the SDPU(u) claimed to have 94,000 members. Alone among the centrist “oligarchic” or “pragmatic” parties, it took the trouble to establish local branches, open newspapers and craft an ideology. They had also perhaps become, like former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko before them, a little too greedy in taking over Ukraine’s assets. In particular, Viktor Yushchenko has singled out the SDPU(u) alone among the oligarchs for his wrath. They certainly stood to lose the most from the energy reforms initiated by Yushchenko’s deputy Yulia Tymoshenko.

In early November 2000, two weeks before the “Kuchmagate” tapes were released in parliament by Oleksandr Moroz, the National Security and Defense Council issued a damning indictment of Tymoshenko’s energy reforms. Although no longer a member of the SDPU(u), Yevhen Marchuk, NSDC secretary since October 1999, remains an ally and the Marchuk-linked newspaper Den is financed by the party.

As the parliamentary elections approached, the threat posed by Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine bloc required as many pro-presidential votes as possible to go to only one bloc, For a United Ukraine. Kuchma was obviously unhappy with the SDPU(u), which was behaving more independently than oligarchic parties are supposed to according to the rules of the “blackmail state.” The left wanted their revenge for Medvedchuk’s support for land reform, while the right wanted to get back at him for organizing parliament’s vote of no confidence in the Yushchenko government and for using the language question to attract Russophone votes in the current election campaign. These factors combined to lead to Medvedchuk’s ouster on Dec. 13 and his party’s fall from grace. Since then Marchuk has come under pressure over allegations of involvement in illegal arms exports, SDPU(u) governors have been replaced in Kherson and Cherkasy, and Kravchuk’s son has been charged with corruption.

The SDPU(u) is now in limbo. They will not be guaranteed full access to administrative resources in the elections, but they will certainly still have some access. This was important for the party in the last elections, when its final result of 4.01 percent was suspiciously close to the 4 percent threshold for receiving a faction in parliament. It reportedly took only 3.9 percent of the count, but its votes were topped up from the Agrarians.

Of all the oligarch parties, the SDPU(u) will be the most difficult to destroy – certainly more difficult than Lazarenko’s Hromada in 1998-1999. Any attempt by the executive to do so would drive the party to join the opposition. This eventuality may seem hard to imagine – but stranger things have happened in Ukrainian politics.

Taras Kuzio is a research associate at the Center for Russian & East European Studies, University of Toronto, and the former director of the NATO Information office in Kyiv.