Oleksandr DERHACHOV, editor-in-chief, Political Thought:
The Communists have always attracted the attention of politicians and sociologists. Until recently the number of their supporters was mainly at issue. Of late, their election turnouts have become less impressive, but there is evidence of some leadership shifts and more flexible tactics. They have every chance to remain one of the principal players of the ongoing political game. Too bad they lack a program that could be actually carried out under current circumstances. Rather, they live on old ideas and tenets. Having a large electorate does not always help make [positive] inner changes. The have no stimuli to evolve in the direction of the European Left, the more so that Ukraine’s sociopolitical situation does not help at all. The point is not so much the leadership’s conservatism as their pragmatism. Today, they can hold the attention of a large portion of the citizenry precisely by staying easily identifiable, by playing on their nostalgic emotions.
Regrettably, the niche of the new Left as a civilized party in parliament is practically vacant. The Socialists are the closest there, but they experience similar problems. They have a more advanced but motley electorate, so the party’s evolution could bring into doubt its capability to surmount the election barriers.
Serhiy MAKEYEV , director, Center for Political Analysis and Consulting:
I think this question should be considered as consisting of two components. First, do we actually want to have a Communist Party in Ukraine? Now the impression is that this party belongs to the past, even if not so distant one. Second, if we do, what should it be like? In the current situation we must admit that we actually need the Communist Party. For the simple reason that we live in a society with quite serious social inequality. The latter implies the presence of larger and smaller groups and categories of people feeling downtrodden and undeservedly humiliated, hence the need for an organization expressing their interests and trying to protect them at the governmental level.
The other question is what kind of Communist Party we want to have. Do we want it the European Left way? I think that only very romantic individuals would want it that way in Ukraine. This is, first, because Europeans live in quite different conditions and have different problems to solve. Our Communist Party should be that way because it would then lose all contact with the people voting for it. I think that its current slogans and methods are adequate to its electorate’s interests. Those five millions that voted for it would not expect from the CPU any different words or deeds. Yet we also know that its electorate is dominated by the elderly, meaning that if the party wants to have a future it must pay attention now to those that could support it in the next parliamentary elections. I think that those others will be those same downtrodden and humiliated individuals that will need the party and will eagerly listen to its simple words about their life, that they live in a way unworthy of not only the twenty- first but even the twentieth century. This is precisely what the Communist Party of Ukraine is doing today.
