Members of the Ukrainian Communist Party, banned after last August's failed hard-line coup, gathered Saturday to form a new party pledged to combat a "slide toward capitalism" in the republic.
"Today, the threat has emerged of pro-capitalist forces becoming dominant," parliamentary deputy Alexander Moroz told nearly 300 delegates at the founding congress of the Party for Social Progress in the Ukraine."People are tired of both infighting and fairy tales. We are founding a new party so let's look to the future. There is no need to shift to capitalism but rather to move forward to socialism," he said.
The new party, like virtually all political groupings in the powerful republic, supports full independence from Moscow combined with some form of integration in a new union of sovereign states.
The Ukrainian Communist Party, part of the larger Soviet party, had about 2.9 million members last August.