Political Parties in Ukraine - Overview

Overview

Even before Ukrainian independence political parties in Ukraine started to form around intellectuals and former Soviet dissidents. They posed the main opposition to the ruling Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine (CP(b)U). At the first convocation of the Verkhovna Rada those party formed the parliamentary opposition People's Council. The most noticeable parties of the parliamentary opposition were People's Movement of Ukraine (The Movement) and Ukrainian Republican Party. Due to the August Putsch in Moscow, a process to prohibit communist parties in Ukraine took place. Led by Oleksandr Moroz, the parliamentary faction of the CP(b)U, Group of 239, started a process to reforming CP(b)U into the Socialist Party of Ukraine. The restriction on existence of communist parties in Ukraine was successfully adopted soon after the Ukrainian independence, however in the couple of years the resolution was later challenged and eventually the restriction was lifted. In 1993 in Donetsk took place the first congress of the reinstated Communist Party of Ukraine led by Petro Symonenko.

In the hysterically organized next parliamentary elections the communists surprisingly achieved the highest party rating, while the main opposing party, the Movement, did not gain even a quarter of their earned seats. Relatively strong has performed the reformed party of CP(b)U, Socialist Party of Ukraine, and its major ally, Peasant Party of Ukraine. About a third of the elected parliamentary were not affiliated. The elections became a major fiasco of the Democratic forces in Ukraine. After the 1994 elections numerous independent political parties were elected to the Ukrainian parliament creating nine deputy groups and parliamentary factions: Communists, Socialists, Agrarians, Inter-regional Deputy Group (MDG), Unity, Center, Statehood, Reforms, and the Movement. A concept of a "situational majority" was first used during that convocation to form a parliamentary coalition. The ruling coalition in the parliament often included Communist Party of Ukraine, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Agrarians, MDG, and Unity.

During the Kuchma presidency (1994-2004) parties started to form around politicians who had achieved power; these parties where often a vehicle of Ukrainian oligarchs. Those parties took their root from the next ruling coalition of the third convocation of Ukrainian parliament that consisted of factions "Fatherland", "Hromada", Party of Greens of Ukraine, People's Democratic Party, the Movement (K), the Movement, Reforms and Order - Reforms-Congress, Social Democratic Party (united), Labor Party of Ukraine, Revival of Regions group, Independents group and non-affiliated deputies. It was the first parliamentary coalition which did not include the Communist Party of Ukraine and since then there was a signification decline in an explicit communist presence in the Ukrainian politics. Scholars have defined several "Clans" in Ukrainian politics grouped around businessman and politicians from particular Ukrainian mayor cities; the "Donetsk-clan" (Rinat Akhmetov, Viktor Yanukovich and Mykola Azarov), the "Dnipropetrovsk-clan" (Yulia Tymoshenko, Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Pinchuk, Sergey Tigipko and Pavlo Lazarenko), the "Kiev-clan" (Viktor Medvedchuk and the brothers Surkis; this clan has also been linked to Zakarpattia) and the smaller "Kharkiv-clan". Professor Paul D'Anieri has argued (in 2006) that Ukrainian parties are "elite-based rather than mass-based". While former Ambassador of Germany to Ukraine (2000–2006) Dietmar Studemann believes that personalities are more important in Ukrainian politics than (ideological) platforms. "Parties in the proper meaning of this word do not exist in Ukraine so far. A party for Germans is its platform first, and its personalities later."

Ukrainian parties tend not to have a clear ideology but to contain different political groups with diverging ideological outlooks. Unlike in Western politics, civilizational and geostrategic orientations play a more important role than economic and socio-political agendas for parties. This has led to coalition governments that would be unusual from a Western point of view; for example: the Azarov Government which includes the Party of Regions with the financial backing of some Ukrainian oligarchs and the Communist Party of Ukraine and the social-democratic Batkivshchyna and the economically liberal European Party of Ukraine in the Second Tymoshenko Government.

After the 2002 elections the Ukrainian parliament saw some consolidation of democratic political parties and the establishment of the main political camps in Ukraine: a coalition of nationally oriented deputies with the pro-European vector, a coalition of left-wing parties, and the pro-Russian parties coalition of the former Soviet nomenklatura. A major change took place during the Orange revolution when finally the two opposing political camps were established after left-wing coalition has split.