Photographs of archived documents appear to show that Iryna Farion, a lawmaker and a key leader of the right-wing nationalist Svoboda party, was a member of the Communist Party in the late Soviet period. She denied the assertion to the Kyiv Post.
Documents dated in 1988 – during
a time when the USSR was opening up under glasnost
and perestroika policies – allegedly
show that as an assistant professor at a Lviv university, Farion applied for membership
to the educational institute’s communist party. On April 17, 1988 her
application was apparently approved.
The Kyiv Post couldn’t independently
verify the authenticity of the documents. They were made public on the dissident-ua.org
website on Nov. 14.
Svoboda is the only mainstream
political party that has called for lustration, a program to cleanse the nation
of former communist members who serve in top government posts and upper
echelons of the civil service corps, including at law enforcement agencies. All
of the nation’s past and current presidents and prime ministers, for example, were communists.
Former Soviet republics Estonia,
Lithuania and Latvia, as well as ex-Soviet satellites Poland, Slovakia and the
Czech Republic implemented similar “de-Sovietization” programs once they gained
independence at the turn of the century.
“Why don’t you ask me about my
legislative work or my seven monographs, but keep digging up shit about me?”
Farion told the Kyiv Post. “I am not and have never been a Communist Party
member, my answer is no.”
In her official statement on the
Svoboda party website, Farion also denied membership in the Soviet Communist
Party and accused her political enemies of trying to blackmail her and ruin her
reputation. “Free and sunny people understand that this is just another useless
attempt to fight nationalist Svoboda,” the statement reads.
Farion is known for her stout
defense of the Ukrainian language. She once famously told Ukrainian Prime
Minister Mykola Azarov that his inability to study Ukrainian either means that
he is sabotaging the nation or just not very smart. She was criticized for
insulting children during her visit to a kindergarten in Lviv in 2010. Video footage
shows her trying to convince kindergarteners to use the Ukrainian diminutives of
their names instead of Russian ones. Those who do not, she advised, should move
to Moscow.
But if the documents are
right, Farion would have had to have taken orders from Moscow in the past.
Svoboda party doctrine, however, has exceptions
to its lustration policy, said Yuriy Syrotiuk, the party’s press officer. “We don’t welcome that (a communist past) but we have
exceptions for three categories of people: former military officers, former law
enforcement officers and scientists. Iryna Farion is the latter,” Syrotiuk
said.
Himself a member of parliament, he wouldn’t
say whether Farion has a communist past.
Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnobyk has
admitted to being a member of the Komsomol youth communist league.
Earlier, however, another Svoboda
party Member of Parliament Andriy Mohnyk dismissed rumors that Svoboda members
have a communist past. “There are no former Communists among Svoboda party
deputies,” he wrote on his Facebook page in defense of colleague Svyatoslav
Khanenko, also suspected of being a former Communist Party member.
Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be
reached at [email protected]
