The Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united) (, abbreviated SDPU(o) or СДПУ(о)) is a Ukrainian political party that was originally established as the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine. At the 1998 and 2002 parliamentary elections it won parliamentary seats, but has since then failed to win any seats. When in the Verkhovna Rada the party was influential, but since the Orange Revolution (of late 2004"Timeline: Battle for Ukraine". BBC NEWS, 23 January 2005. URL Retrieved 12 September 2006) it has been marginalized.Left and Center - Left Parties in Ukraine, Friedrich Ebert Foundation (November 2010)
History
Social Democratic Party of Ukraine
The Social Democratic Party of Ukraine () was founded in May 1990. Unlike the originally-united SD, the Social Democratic refused to follow democratic socialism and was against the Ukrainian federalist movement. The party joined the People's Movement of Ukraine, which already had some of its members in Verkhovna Rada. During the 1991 presidential elections, it supported Viacheslav Chornovil. In May 1992, Yuriy Zbitnyev was elected a head of the party replacing, Oleksandr Suhonyako. Suhonyako, who wanted the party to follow social liberalism policies left the party with his supporters.
In the spring of 1993, two parties were merged: the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine and the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (led by Yuriy Buzduhan) and were registered as a single party, called the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine. Buzduhan was head of the new party. Before the next parliamentary elections, the new party was to be also merged with the Party of Democratic Revival of Ukraine, but such agreements fell through, and the parties ran independently. The party elected two People's Deputies in the 1994 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Buzduhan and Hryhoriy Ryhachov.Yuliya Mostova, Serhiy Rakhmanin. Partisan Ukraine. Part IV Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united) (УКРАИНА ПАРТИЙНАЯ. ЧАСТЬ VI СОЦИАЛ-ДЕМОКРАТИЧЕСКАЯ ПАРТИЯ УКРАИНЫ (ОБЪЕДИНЕННАЯ)). The Mirror Weekly. 15 March 2002
Following the 1994 parliamentary election, the party split into two factions. The first was led by Buzduhan, and was re-registered as the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine. The other faction, led by Yuriy Zbitnyev also wanted to be registered as SDPU, but was denied registration under such name.
Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united) In 1995, a new merger was registered by Ministry of Justice of Ukraine where the Zbitnyev's faction of former SDPU merged with Party of Human Rights () of Vasyl Onopenko and Ukrainian Party of Justice () of Mykhailo Hrechka to form the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united).Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States 1999, Routledge, 1998, (page 872) The head of the new party was Minister of Justice Vasyl Onopenko, while his deputies were Viktor Medvedchuk, Yuriy Zbitnyev and Mykhailo Hrechka.
The documents of the new party stated that it was the successor of SDPU, Party of Human Rights and Ukrainian Party of Justice, which all of them were dissolved. However, according to Ukrainian historian Vasyl Yablonskyi, a large portion of SDPU members and majority of Ukrainian Party of Justice never agreed with such decision. The mentioned parties did not only become inactive, but even actively counteracted the newly formed SDPU. The social democrats of Buzduhan accused the leaders of new party in political fraud, and representatives of Ukrainian Party of Justice declared that Mykhailo Hrechka had exceeded his authority.
Viktor Medvedchuk and Hryhoriy Surkis One of the most powerful blocs within the SDPU(o) consisted of lawyer Viktor Medvedchuk and businessman Hryhoriy Surkis. Medvedchuk had made a name for himself in the Soviet Union as the government-assigned lawyer of several dissidents, among them the poet Vasyl Stus, while Surkis was a football manager. Together, their bloc formed a pro-Russian base within the SDPU(o), which caused great concern among other members, causing them to petition former President Leonid Kravchuk to join the party to prevent a takeover.
Medvedchuk and Surkis had their own bank as early as 1992, called the Ukrainian Credit Bank, and business holding named "Omega-XXI vek". Political and business opponents of the two claimed that the business holding was an elaborate pyramid scheme which, by 1995, owed to the public 28.2 trillion Ukrainian karbovanets.
Another important business entity of the group was the Slavutych Industrial and Financial Concern, which, starting in 1991-92 was receiving credits from foreign banks for purchase of oil which was refining in Ukraine during next 4 to 5 years. In the mid-1990s, the offices of Slavutych were set on fire, and all accounting records were destroyed.
Through Slavutych, in the early 1990s, Medvedchuk and Surkis also established close relationships with then-President Kravchuk. According to Kravchuk, the president of Slavutych proposed an economic programme to recover from the economic crisis resulting from the Soviet Union's collapse, which had been received warmly by acting Prime Minister of Ukraine Yukhym Zvyahilskyi and was soon taken into development by the Ukrainian government.
Following the 1994 Ukrainian presidential election, a special state commission to review the activities of Slavutych was formed, but yielded no results. The newly-elected Leonid Kuchma was at first critical of Medvedchuk and Surkis, but soon after elections was able to find common ground, awarding both of them the Order of Merit in 1996.
Further developments In January 1996, the Ministry of Justice annulled the registration of the SDPU led by Onopenko, and in March 1996 re-registered Buzduhan's faction as the SDPU. In April 1996, Onopenko's organization conducted an extraordinary party congress, where it was decided to change the party's name by adding the word "(united)". In 1996, the party was joined by Surkis and the owners of the Inter television channel, Oleksandr Zinchenko with Ihor Pluzhnikov.
By 1998, the leadership of the party had shifted to Medvechuk, Surkis, and Kravchuk. During the presidency of Leonid Kuchma, the party portrayed itself as a centrist, social-democratic moderate political force that advocated for Ukrainian accession to the European Union and supported Kuchma. The party was closely linked to the presidential administration and big business in Kyiv.Ukrainian politics, energy and corruption under Kuchma and Yushchenko by Taras Kuzio (7 March 2008)
According to Ukrainian newspaper Halytski Kontrakty, in 1998 the Cabinet of Ukraine transferred under administration to the Ukrainian Credit Bank a share stock package of the Zaporizhia Factory of Ferroalloys, as well as number of regional power distributors such as Kirovohrad Power Distribution Company, Ternopil Power Distribution Company, and Kherson Power Distribution Company. The leaders of the SDPU(o) denied any relations to the energy distribution business, and Medvedchuk particularly called it "child's talk" ().
However, according to the Siberian newspaper Negotsiant, the representative of energy interests for the social democrats was Russian businessman Konstantin Grigorishin, who held a place on supervisory boards in several Ukrainian companies, among them Dniprospetsstal, the Zaporizhia Factory of Ferroalloys, Sumy Power Distribution Company, and many others. According to Prometall Ukrainian Informational Agency, Grigorishin, along with his partners Levon and Aleksandr Vardanyan, was one of the governors of the Court Holding Investment Pool Company that owned a number of controlling share packages for several power distribution companies.Oksana Kirik. Zaporizhia Factory of Ferroalloys capitalized its dividends (Запорожский завод ферросплавов капитализировал дивиденды). Ivestgazeta at delo.ua. 4 October 2005SDPU(u) partitioning the energy market with the Donetsk clan (СДПУ(О) делят энергорынок с "донецкими"). Ukrayinska Pravda. 19 June 2002 Grigorishin was also the owner of Sozidanie, which owned number of strategically-important Ukrainian companies, among them the Sumy Engineering Association.
At the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary election, the SDPU(o) won 4.01% of the vote, primarily in the party's traditional stronghold of Zakarpattia Oblast. During the 1998 parliamentary election, the party ran on a moderate Ukrainian nationalist ideology. The party list was significantly shaken up in this election, with political newcomer Petro Poroshenko placed near the top ten, and original members Andriy Nosenko and Yuriy Zbitnyev placed below of the top 20. Out of total of 178 names on the party list, only the upper 14 made it to the Verkhovna Rada.
Soon after elections in April 1998, Onopenko stated that inclusion of Kravchuk and Yevhen Marchuk on the party list, as well as reliance on the Dynamo's ranking was a mistake. Following the statement, the party's board denounced the statement of the party's leader and called for a congress to decide the fate of its leader. The October congress excluded its leader from the party.
In October 1998, after Medvedchuk became leader of the party, several prominent former members of the party, led by Onopenko, established the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party. Украинская социал-демократическая партия, Информационно-аналитический центр "ЛІГА" In February 1999, the SDPU(o) also dismissed Marchuk, who wanted with help of the party to run for the President of Ukraine. Marchuk in turn decided to organize own Social Democratic Union before the upcoming elections.
During the 1999 Ukrainian presidential election, the party supported Leonid Kuchma. The party became the first to nominated the president to run for the second term, and played a key role in his successful campaign.
Shift to Russophilia During the 2002 parliamentary elections, SDPU(o) won 6.27% of the national vote and 24 seats.Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World, Andrew Wilson, Yale University Press, 2005, Late poll results in 2002 had predicted the party to win 9 to 10% of total votes.Ukraine's election frontrunners, BBC News (28 March 2002) During the 2002 parliamentary election, the party promoted a Russophile agenda which would later become evocative of Medvedchuk's political views. It did considerably better in the Donbas and Crimea than 4 years earlier.
By early January 2003, the SDPU(o) faction consisted of 40 seats.
The SDPU(o) opposed Viktor Yushchenko's coalition of liberal and nationalist movements, and in March 2002 blamed nationalist elements linked to the pro-Yushchenko "Our Ukraine" alliance for the murder of the vice-governor of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, who was an SDPU(o) member.
During the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, SDPU(o) also took a strongly pro-Russian and anti-Western stand and backed the candidacy of Viktor Yanukovych. In the aftermath of Viktor Yushchenko's "Orange Revolution", SDPU(o) declared itself to be in opposition to the new government.Medvedchuk emerges from shadows, Kyiv Post (27 January 2005) Analysts stated that TV channels and other media controlled by the party, such as Inter, 1+1, and TET began a sharply anti-American and anti-NATO campaign in response to Yushchenko's pro-Western proposals.Virtual Politics - Faking Democraty in the Post-Soviet World, Andrew Wilson, Yale University Press, 2005, UKRAINIAN PARTIES SCRAMBLE FOR MEDIA, FOREIGN ALLIES, AHEAD OF PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS, The Jamestown Foundation (August 17, 2005) Around the time of the Orange Revolution in late 2004, more ten 10 deputies left the SDPU(o) faction in the Verkhovna Rada; by late January 2005, the faction included 27 deputies out of the Verkhovna Rada's 450 seats.
Political scandals and Orange Revolution