Leonid Kuchma (born August 9, 1938) was the second president of independent Ukraine from July 19, 1994 to January 23, 2005. He took office after winning the 1994 presidential election, defeating his rival, incumbent President Leonid Kravchuk. Kuchma was re-elected for an additional five-year presidential term in 1999.
Native places and origin
Where did Leonid Kuchma begin his life? His biography began in the village of Chaykino in the agricultural Chernihiv region. His father Daniil Prokofievich (1901-1942) served as a sapper in the army during World War II, was wounded and died in a field hospital in the Novgorod region when Leonid was four years old. Mother Praskovya Trofimovna worked all her life on the collective farm.
Years of study
After graduating from a rural school, Leonid Kuchma entered the Physics and Technology Faculty (FTF) of Dnipropetrovsk State University, which he graduated in 1960 with the qualification of a mechanical engineer. The fact is that the FTF was a difficult faculty, a kind of technical university within a general university. It was specially created for the training of engineering personnel for the large rocket and space production created in the Dnipropetrovsk region in the 50s. Therefore, most of its graduates were sent to work at the Southern Machine-Building Plant or at the Yuzhnoye missile design bureau, which was led by the famous General Designer M.K. Yangel in the 1950s and 1960s. The young engineer Leonid Kuchma was also sent there.
Successful marriage as a career mover
What are the chances of getting into a leadership position in the design bureau, where up to 20 thousand employees worked in the best years, many of whom graduated from leading technical universities in Moscow and Leningrad, had a Ukrainian guy after a provincial university, whose education level was clearly lower? That's right, no. Nevertheless, Leonid Kuchma in 1982 was already the first deputy general designer, who was then V.F. Utkin. And before that, for about 7 years he was a party organizer of the KB, and there were more than 10 thousand communists in his party organization, so the appointment of the secretary of the party organization in such a collective was the prerogative of the CPSU Central Committee.
How did he succeed? The guiding thread for Leonid was a successful marriage to the daughter of the then chief technologist Yuzhmash, who later was transferred to Moscow to the Ministry of General Engineering as the head of one of the commanders. Of course, a senior father-in-law gave the son-in-law's career an initial impetus.
Career during the Soviet period
In general, one way or another, but for 15 years Leonid Kuchma has gone from an ordinary engineer to the head of rocket technology tests at the Baikonur Cosmodrome with the rank of assistant to the General Designer. This is, in fact, a very interesting and promising (in the sense of further career growth) position. Indeed, the preparation for launch and the launch of the rocket itself is the result of the work of many allied enterprises from all over the USSR that participated in the design and production of the entire missile complex, which, in addition to the rocket itself, also includes a launch pad or shaft, transportation means, control system equipment, telemetry, navigation etc. The test director reports to Moscow to high civil and military authorities on a daily basis about the progress of work, and often receives various high commissions. He is always in sight and hearing, everyone knows him, he is referred to in cross-sectional reports and messages to various authorities. Having worked for several years at the training ground, such a specialist usually transfers to a high managerial chair in his native enterprise (or in another department).
So our hero in 1975 moved to the chair of the party secretary, first, Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, and then Yuzhmash. In 1982, he left the party committee of the Kuchma plant to the post of first deputy general designer of the design bureau, and when the long-term director of Yuzhmash Makarov retired in the late 80s, he was appointed to his vacant post.
Thus, at the time of the collapse of the USSR, he came with a reputation as a major business executive, although during his party-production career he did not create and did not develop a single noticeable design or production project.
Premiership during the presidency of Kravchuk
Back in 1990, the then head of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Vladimir Ivashko, offered Kuchma a prime minister, but he refused, citing a lack of experience. Two years passed, and for many, including Kuchma himself, it became clear that the country, under the leadership of President Kravchuk, was heading into the abyss. Under the threat of losing everything that she gained as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the eastern Ukrainian elite grouped and forced Kravchuk to appoint Kuchma as prime minister with the right to issue decrees that have the force of laws. Since then, Ukraine has been paying taxes for several years not according to the Tax Code, but according to a decree of the Cabinet of Ministers.
Leonid Kuchma - President
He resigned from the post of Prime Minister of Ukraine in September 1993 to run for president in the 1994 special elections on a platform to stimulate the economy by restoring economic relations with Russia and pursuing rapid market reforms. He won a clear victory against incumbent President Leonid Kravchuk, receiving strong support from industrial areas in the east and south. His worst results were in the west of the country.
In October 1994, Kuchma launched comprehensive economic reforms, including the removal of price controls, tax cuts, privatization of industrial and agricultural enterprises, as well as reforms in foreign exchange regulation and banking. In 1996, the Ukrainian hryvnia was introduced, the initial rate of which against the dollar was 1.75.
Kuchma was re-elected in 1999 for his second term. This time, those regions that gave him strong support for the first time voted for his opponent Petro Symonenko, and the regions that had previously voted against him, on the contrary, supported him.
For ten years of his presidency, he almost every year changed the prime ministers. The most famous of them are Pavel Lazarenko, who received a term in the United States, as well as Viktor Yushchenko, who replaced Kuchma in 2004.
For the period of his two presidential terms in Ukraine, the current scheme of government bodies and the legislative system has developed. A photo of Leonid Kuchma during the second presidency is shown below.
Role in the 2004 Electoral Crisis
Kuchma’s role in this crisis has not yet been clarified. After the second round on November 22, 2004, it seemed that Yanukovych won the election by deception, because of which the opposition and independent observers challenged their results, which led to an “orange” revolution.
They say that Kuchma was urged by Yanukovych and Viktor Medvedchuk (head of the presidential office) to declare a state of emergency and to conduct the inauguration of Yanukovych. Kuchma did not do this. Yanukovych later accused Kuchma publicly of betrayal. After Viktor Yushchenko came to power as a result of an unconstitutional third round of voting, he congratulated him on his victory and officially handed over succession to the successor in the country, but left Ukraine shortly after. Indeed, Yushchenko’s associates called the Kuchma regime criminal. He returned to Ukraine in March 2005, probably receiving assurances of his immunity from the new president.
For the past 10 years, he has been little noticeable in the political life of the country, almost did not give interviews, did not shine on television screens. If it were not for the events of the last two years, then we probably would not have heard anything more about such a man as Kuchma Leonid Danilovich. His biography was replenished with another bright page when in 2014 he was appointed by President Poroshenko as his personal representative in the contact group at the talks in Minsk on the settlement of the war in the Donbass.
