Communist Party of Ukraine

A founding and ruling political party of the Ukrainian SSR operated as a republican branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

Founded as the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine (CP(b)U) in 1918 in Taganrog, then part of Ukrainian Soviet Republic, it was the sole governing party in Ukraine as part of 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 planned 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.

On 30 August 1991, the Communist Party was outlawed in Ukraine. After the ban was lifted in 1993, the Communist Party of Ukraine was re-created in Donetsk under the leadership of Petro Symonenko. Following the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, all communist parties on the territory of Ukraine were outlawed and banned, with the ideology being criminalized.

Secretary: Georgy Pyatakov (12 July – 9 September 1918), Serafima Hopner (9 September – 22 October 1918), Emanuel Kviring (23 October 1918 – 6 March 1919), Georgy Pyatakov (6 March – 30 May 1919), Stanislav Kosior (30 May – 10 December 1919), Rafail Farbman (acting, 10 December 1919 – 23 March 1920), Nikolay Bestchetvertnoi (23 – 25 March 1920), Stanislav Kosior (acting 25 March – 17 October 1920), Vyacheslav Molotov (23 November 1920 – 22 March 1921), Feliks Kon (22 March – 13 December 1921), Dmitry Manuilsky (14 December 1921 – 10 April 1923), Emanuel Kviring (10 April 1923 – 7 April 1925), Lazar Kaganovich (7 April 1925 – 14 July 1928), Stanislav Kosior (14 July 1928 – 27 January 1938), Nikita Khrushchev (27 January 1938 – 3 March 1947), Lazar Kaganovich (3 March – 26 December 1947), Nikita Khrushchev (26 December 1947 – 16 December 1949), Leonid Melnikov (16 December 1949 – 4 June 1953), Alexei Kirichenko (4 June 1953 – 26 December 1957), Nikolai Podgorny (26 December 1957 – 2 July 1963), Petro Shelest (2 July 1963 – 25 May 1972), Volodymyr Shcherbytsky (25 May 1972 – 28 September 1989), Volodymyr Ivashko (28 September 1989 – 23 June 1990), Stanislav Hurenko (23 June 1990 – 30 August 1991)