The Communist Party of Ukraine (, КПУ, KPU; ) was the founding and ruling political party of the Ukrainian SSR operated as a republican branch (union republics) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
Founded as the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine (CP(b)U) in 1918 in Moscow, Russian SFSR, it was the sole governing party in Ukraine during its time in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union. While the anti-Bolshevik Ukrainian People's Republic had its own political parties of socialist ideologies, the Communist Party of Ukraine was created out of the party of Russian Bolsheviks in Ukraine known as the RSDRP(b) – Social-Democracy of Ukraine. The party was denied the right to have a separate party statute and was governed by the statute of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1952, the party was renamed as the Communist Party of Ukraine.
Like all other CPSU republican branches, the CPU was committed, in accordance to the CPSU party statute, to adherence to Marxist–Leninist ideology based on the writings of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx, and formalized under Joseph Stalin. The party had pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized and a command economy was introduced. Prior to the adoption of central planning in 1929, Lenin had introduced a mixed economy, commonly referred to as the New Economic Policy, in the 1920s, which allowed to introduce certain capitalist elements in the Soviet economy after the disastrous experience of war communism. This lasted until 26 August 1991, when the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) suspended and on 30 August 1991 prohibited the Communist Party of Ukraine based on the fact that "the leadership of the Communist Party of Ukraine in its actions supported the coup d'état" [in Moscow]. From the parliamentary faction of the Communist Party, following its 1991 prohibition, the Socialist Party of Ukraine was created. Due to efforts of some other communist cells across Ukraine that did not join the Socialist Party, the Communist Party of Ukraine was re-established in 1993 in Russian-speaking Donetsk as a communist political party of independent Ukraine, while joining the Union of Communist Parties – Communist Party of the Soviet Union from Moscow. Some members who joined the Socialist Party, joined the new political entity after its re-establishment, among whom the most notable was Adam Martyniuk. Following sanctions against the party in 1991, the party fell apart in a similar way to its parent organization (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), having members of such main deviations like Democratic Platform and Interregional Deputy group reorganized into separate political entities. The ban lasted until 2001 and in May 2002, the older party was merged into the 1993 CPU. Following the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, all communist parties on the territory of Ukraine were outlawed and banned, with the ideology criminalized.
History
Russian Bolsheviks in Ukraine
The party traces its beginning to committees and party's cells of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) that existed at the end of the 19th century in all bigger cities and industrial centers on Ukrainian territory which was part of the Russian Empire. Under influence from the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class in Saint Petersburg, in 1897 such organization was also formed in Kyiv and Yekaterinoslav which also were taking part in preparation and convocation of the 1st Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898. With release of newspaper Iskra in December 1900 in Germany, on territory of Ukraine spread out a network of the Lenin's Iskra group and organizations. Among the most notable activists in Ukraine during that period were Ivan Babushkin, Rosalia Zemlyachka, Pyotr Krasikov, Isaak Lalayants, Friedrichs Lengniks, Maxim Litvinov, Grigory Petrovsky, Mykola Skrypnyk (Nikolay Skripnik), Dmitry Ulyanov, Vasiliy Shelgunov, Alexander Schlichter, Alexander Tsiurupa, and others. Following the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (1903) in social-democratic organizations has developed a struggle between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. On behalf of Vladimir Lenin, in 1904 Vatslav Vorovsky with Lalayants and Levitskiy created in Odessa the Southern Bureau of the RSDLP that led activities of Odessa, Yekaterinoslav, Nikolayev committees, brought together around itself Bolshevik organizations of the South, conducted great deal of work in preparation to the 3rd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1905.