Leonid Kravchuk - Definition


Leonid Kravchuk - Definition

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Leonid Kravchuk in Kiev, August 1992

Leonid Makarovych Kravchuk (uk: Леонід Макарович Кравчук; born 10 January 1934) is a Ukrainian politician. He was the first President of Ukraine from early December 1991 to July 1994.

Biography

Kravchuk was born in Velyky Zhytyn (now Volyns'ka oblast'), which was part of Poland at the time of his birth, but became part of Ukraine after World War II, which occurred when he was a child. He joined the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1958, and rose through the ranks of the party and its agitprop department. He became a member of the Ukrainian Politburo in 1989 and the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada in 1990, as the central government of the Soviet Union became weaker. With this development, Kravchuk became the effective leader of the republic, left the Soviet communist party in August 1991, and began to support the Ukrainian independence movement. He officially declared his support for Ukrainian independence after the August 1991 Soviet coup attempt. Later that year, he was elected President of Ukraine in Ukraine's first presidential elections, as the Soviet Union was collapsing and Ukraine became independent.

Kravchuk ran for a second term as President in 1994, but was defeated by his former Prime Minister, Leonid Kuchma. He remains active in Ukrainian politics, serving as a member of Verkhovna Rada and the leader of SDPUo parliamentary group (since 2002).

Leonid Kravchuk is an author of few books dealing with his career and Politics of Ukraine (some of them were translated into English).

Kravchuk is married, has children and grandchildren. His hobbies include reading and chess. He is also fond of Moscow patrol breed dogs.

Political portrait

Leonid Kravchuk's political creed is avoiding conflicts and straightforward declaration of his position. He is widely considered to be cunning, diplomatic and cautious. This approach was effectively illustrated and fixed in history with the anecdote, told by Kravchuk himself on TV in mid-1990s. The anecdote portrays the man refusing to take an umbrella because he hopes to "slip between the raindrops".

Such diplomacy has helped Kravchuk to retain and strengthen his power over Ukraine during the transition from Soviet rule to independence. He possessed third role in Ukraine's CPSU leadership before the fall of Soviet Union and didn't belong to the ruling "Dnipropetrovs'k clan". This has pushed him to avoid violent hardcore position towards democratic changes and to became compromise figure for both party conservatives and reformists highly critical to communist rule. Considering the fact that reformists consisted the minority in early-1990s Verkhovna Rada, Kravchuk as a speaker, not those reformists, have been the real creator of Ukrainian independence.

After becoming the president of independent Ukraine, Kravchuk has done his best to achieve and strengthen formal sovereignty of the country and develop its relations with the West. He has stand the enormous pressure from Russia and refused to retain the common Armed Forces and currency inside the CIS. Another historical strategy of Kravchuk was Ukraine's voluntary refusal of nuclear weapons based on its territory.

Despite those achievements, Leonid Kravchuk became definitely the negative figure of Ukrainian history because of his economic policy. Experts and politicians agree that he failed to avoid corruption in the privatization of country's industry and promote effective financial decisions. Ukrainian annual inflation rates in 1993-1995 have reached the world's highest record of 10000%. Millions of loans were given by semi-government banks later becoming the bad debts. This has lead to the many-years delays in salaries for industry workers, teachers etc. The collapse of "Black Sea steamship company" became the saddest symbol of Kravchuk's era. This world's largest global-reach merchant fleet (based mostly in Odessa) has been covertly sold out to foreign companies, mostly for fake debts. Hundreds of sailors who haven't received delayed salaries were trapped for years onboard their vessels throughout the world. Kravchuk's own son was later accused of taking part in this fraud.

Shocked by the above-mentioned developments and also by growing tensions with Russia, the voters of industrial and predominantly Russian-speaking South-Eastern Ukraine supported Kravchuk's main rival, Leonid Kuchma, in 1994 presidential elections. He won under the slogans of fighting corruption, reconstruction of economy and further integration with Russia. Kravchuk instead seemed to rely on bureaucratic pressure, support of pro-Western nationalists and media bias.

Soon after his defeat, in 1998, Leonid Kravchuk joined the powerful business and political clan known as "Kiev holding" or "Dynamo group". This clan, lead by oligarchs Viktor Medvedchuk and Hryhoriy Surkis, is formally organized in United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine or SDPUo (Ukrainian: Соціал-демократична партія України (об’єднана), СДПУ (о) ). Despite formal centrist/social-democratic slogans, the party is widely associated with big business, organized crime, corruption and media bias in favor of President Leonid Kuchma. In 2004, H. Surkis has been banned from visiting United States due to his alleged involvement in irregulations during Ukrainian presidential election, 2004. Since 2000s, the clan also took strongly pro-Russian and anti-Western stand. Analysts say that TV channels and other media controlled by the group has started the sharp anti-U.S./anti-NATO campaign.

Kravchuk is being highly critisized for remaining one of the leaders of SDPUo, specializing in negotiations and public relations, despite his declared pro-democratic and patriotic position. In November 2004, following the disputed Ukrainian presidential election, he told media that he was afraid that the resulting crisis would cause the disintegration of the country, intensifying movements for certain regions of Ukraine to join other countries.

Biography

Political portrait

See also