[In the summer of 2003 we learnt that the group pretending to support us in Ukraine was in fact fraudulent. See the linked article--IBT.]

LRCI Flip-flop on Ukrainian SPU

In our introduction to the English translation of the election statement produced by our Ukrainian comrades posted on this page last week, (IBT (Ukraine) Election Statement) we characterized as a "minor scandal" the League for a Revolutionary Communist International’s inclusion of the bourgeois "Socialist Party of Ukraine” (SPU) among a list of "Left and left-centrist blocks and parties" they offered electoral support to (Workers Power Global e-newswire, 16 March).

In its 31 March edition, the LRCI newswire flip-flopped and announced that the “SPU has become a respectable liberal bourgeois party and has nothing common with the 'left'." There was no indication whether this transformation had supposedly taken place in the intervening two weeks, or if this new characterization was in lieu of a forthright repudiation of the previous assessment. Nor was there any suggestion that workers who voted SPU (perhaps as a result of the LRCI's earlier endorsement) should regret their decision.

Meanwhile our Ukrainian comrades inform us that in Kiev the line change is being explained as a clever tactic—according to the LRCI’s Ukrainian supporters they deliberately waited until after SPU deputies were elected before “exposing” them as bourgeois! We expect London will straighten them out on that, but any political credit earned by the LRCI for its belated withdrawal of political support from the SPU has to be discounted for the cowardly fashion in which the about-turn was executed. Instead of clearly explaining why the line change was necessary and assessing the roots of the mistake, as a serious organization would have, the LRCI leadership attempted to save face by simply publishing a position diametrically opposed to its earlier one and hoping no one noticed. This is how slippery centrists operate, whereas revolutionaries do not shrink from calling things by their right names.

Published: 12 April 2002

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