Gritsenko Anatoly Stepanovich (born October 25, 1957) is a Ukrainian politician who entered the political arena during the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko as an active member of his Our Ukraine party. Having occupied the post of Minister of Defense after the “orange” revolution, he did not leave him with three prime ministers who had been replaced in two years: Tymoshenko, Yekhanurov and Yanukovych.
Origin and parents
Gritsenko Anatoly Stepanovich - a native Ukrainian, a native of Cherkasy village near the old Russian town of Zvenigorodka. For three years, the Gritsenko family lived in a rural house of a grandmother, the wife of a peasant dispossessed in 1933 (and then dead) of a peasant whose five of seven children died in that terrible "famine" year. Then the parents moved to the mining town of Vatutino, where they found work. Toli's father, Stepan Demyanovich, was a mountain rescuer. Seventeen-year-old Stepan Gritsenko was drafted into the army in 1944. Taught sapper business, he cleared Finland, Denmark, Norway. Later he served as a tanker on the T-34, a radio operator gunner, and in general - a soldier for six and a half years.
Stepan Gritsenko was married to his fellow countrywoman Anna from the village of Voronovka in the Gorodishchensky district. Anatoly's mother worked at a construction site, in communal enterprises. She still lives in the same Vatutinsky two-room apartment where her son grew up.
Childhood and years of study
Gritsenko Anatoly Stepanovich graduated from the eight-year period in Vatutino. He studied easily, read a lot, grew up quite a typical Soviet guy. According to his own recollections, the grandmother’s stories (the last years of her life she lived in her son’s apartment in Vatutino) somewhat spoiled the general rainbow picture of reality around him, but the young Anatoly then tried not to think about it. Indeed, ahead was a great life according to Soviet canons.
The military past of his father greatly influenced the life choice of Anatoly. Biography Gritsenko was firmly connected with the army. At the age of 14, he announced to his relatives about his desire to enter the Suvorov school, and, despite the mother’s dissuasions, he nevertheless left his home in Kiev. The future Minister of Defense of Ukraine graduated from the Suvorov School with a gold medal. Then there was the faculty of aircraft equipment of the Kiev Higher Military Aviation Engineering School, and again a gold medal upon its completion in 1979.
Service in the Soviet Army
After the school, there was a two-year service in the air regiment near Akhtyrka in Sumy, where the newly-made lieutenant engineer commanded a group engaged in the maintenance of Czechoslovak combat training aircraft L-39. The technique was unfamiliar, because in the school the whole process was focused on domestic planes and helicopters, but I also had to master it. The flight intensity was very high, during the year the regiment pilots spent 25, 000 hours in the air. Today, all Ukrainian aviation does not fly so much.
A promising young officer (and even a medalist!) Was invited to study in postgraduate studies (military graduate school). And three years later, he defended his Ph.D. thesis ahead of schedule on the topic “Automation of control of a heavy military transport aircraft in landing mode”. The calculations were performed for the An-124 Ruslan aircraft in cooperation with the Antonov Design Bureau. The thesis was recognized as a quality work, it was positively evaluated at the Zhukovsky Academy and Bauman MVTU.
Teaching activities
After defending his dissertation, Anatoly Stepanovich Gritsenko began teaching in his native KVVAIU. It was an interesting and eventful eight years. The Department of Automatic Control Systems and Flight and Navigation Systems, headed by Professor Aslanyan Albert Eduardovich, had a surprisingly innovative and friendly atmosphere. The current well-known Ukrainian politician is still friends with his colleagues.
Gritsenko read technical disciplines to our and foreign cadets and officers - SAU, Dynamics and Control of Aircraft, Aviation Equipment of the Aircraft, etc. Gritsenko is the author of more than 100 scientific papers published in Ukraine, Belgium, the Netherlands, USA, Germany and Switzerland.
First steps in politics
In the late 80s, Anatoly Gritsenko headed the party organization of the department. Without exaggeration, the panic “above” was caused by the decision of its staff to stop transferring membership fees to the Central Committee and join the Democratic platform in the party. By the way, this party organization was the first among all military structures on the territory of Ukraine, which dared to take such a step. Major Gritsenko was then dragged to high offices, demanding an explanation. However, he survived.
Later he was the organizer of the support group of the candidate of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR Vladimir Chernyak. In his spare time, he helped organize meetings, convinced people, put up postcards with his son on the Kharkov massif in Kiev … And when Chernyak was elected deputy, rallied several people with whom they prepared an examination of bills, sent materials to Moscow, called directly to the hotel with their advice.
The beginning of service in the Ukrainian army
The future Minister of Defense of Ukraine began working in the newly created Office of Military Education of the Ministry of Defense in 1992. It was a completely different, new staff work for him. The legacy of the Union in Ukraine remained 42 higher military educational institutions, and more than 100 military departments. There are a lot of universities, for Ukraine there are too many, but these were only separate elements of the previously integral allied system. The military education system for Ukraine had to be created, adapting it to the needs of the new, Ukrainian army. And it was Gritsenko who was engaged in this task.
Study in the USA
In 1993, Anatoly Gritsenko fell on a year and a half course in the United States, and, according to him, completely by accident. It turns out that the American government invited post-Soviet countries to send promising aviation officers with the rank of lieutenant colonel or colonel with a PhD degree and knowledge of English to study in the USA. The head of the specialized department in the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine could not find the corresponding candidate, and somehow Anatoly Gritsenko complained about it in the smoking room. It turned out that his interlocutor is fully suitable for this mission.
So the future Ukrainian politician first got to the Military Institute of Foreign Languages of the US Department of Defense in San Antonio, Texas, and then to the University of the United States Air Force in Montgomery, Alabama.
Seen in the United States, he is simply stunned (he openly writes about this on his own site). An extraordinary degree of openness (and who should the “states” be afraid of in 1993?), The highest level of technical equipment and teaching (to read one author’s lecture, teachers often fly from Europe across the ocean), the sharpness and depth of discussions on any topics between students are all this makes Gritsenko an ardent admirer of the American system of values and lifestyle. So, for a year and a half, a new Amero-Ukrainian “Janissary” was forged from the exemplary former Soviet military and scientist, whose life goal was to remake the Ukrainian army in the Western, that is, the American manner.
