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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Shadows of a Forgotten Ancestor

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU) representatives laid flowers at both the Shevchenko and Lenin statues on August 24.

This move looks at least anachronistic given that on Independence Day both government officials and opposition members paid their respect to the spiritual symbol of the nation, whereas the Communist leader’s statue was not visited even by the Communists.

Addressing a sparse crowd in Besarabia Square, Secretary of SPU Kyiv City Committee Vasyl Arestov stated that the shape independence has taken is tormenting the people of Ukraine. Following an already elaborated scheme of interaction with supporters of the socialist idea, he accused former President Kravchuk and President Kuchma of betraying Ukraine’s national interests and disregarding the will of the people. According to Arestov, the politicians have disfigured the content of Ukraine’s historic Declaration of Independence.

The Kyiv Committee Secretary also called the self-anointed leader of the world proletariat a herald of Ukrainian independence, apparently referring not so much to Muraviov’s 1918 seizure of Kyiv but rather to the fact that the federal composition of the USSR and the declared right of nations to self-determination became the legal basis for creating the independent Ukrainian state. Following this kind of logic, one can also claim that the actions of the putsch hard-liners in 1991 contributed much more to our country’s sovereignty than anything Lenin ever did.

Vasyl Arestov condemned those who, in his view, have betrayed the socialist idea, but he offered no further explanation nor did he announce the “traitors” names, perhaps because in that case he would have had to face the issue of the socialists’ turning away from the teachings of Marxism-Leninism at their last Congress.

The Kyiv Socialist leader pointed out that there are still people in Ukraine who believe in the “most just idea of socialism.” However, considering that the number of such people is rapidly falling (on August 24 the Ukraine Palace was picketed by only 50 leftists, although a few days earlier the action was advertised as a big protest rally), such statements sound less than convincing.

Photo by Leonid BAKKA,The Day

 

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