UKRAINIAN REDS HOST ANTI-REFORM COMRADES.

Ukraine’s Communists, socialists, and other leftist organizations celebrated the October Revolution anniversary in style at the Kiev National Opera over the weekend. Delegations of like-minded parties from Belarus, China, North Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, and rump Yugoslavia attended. Ukrainian Communist party first secretary Petro Simonenko’s keynote address dwelt on the social costs of the Ukrainian government’s reforms, contrasting them with the leftist promise of a "just society." The leftists have called protest rallies in industrial centers for November 7. (Xinhua, November 2; UNIAN, November 4) Simonenko is one of the leaders of a sizable leftist political bloc capable of snagging the reforms through parliamentary obstruction and labor trouble. That bloc has just derailed passage of the government’s budget in parliament, underscoring the political difficulties that the government must overcome in implementing reforms agreed upon with Western financial institutions.

Assassination Shocks and Baffles Ukraine.