Turning the pages back...

December 5, 1999

Exactly five years ago, in our issue of December 5, 1999, we reported on the inauguration of President Leonid Kuchma, who told the nation in an inauguration address on November 30 that Ukraine finally must sweep aside the detritus of its Communist past and strengthen a still-fragile democracy, to become a society in which individual incentive and free markets rule.

"Today is not a date of personal triumph for me, it is not one of individual victory, but a triumph and a victory for the Ukrainian nation," said Mr. Kuchma after being sworn in for a second term. The president called his second inauguration a historical Rubicon - Ukraine's final rejection of Communism and a new era for Europe. "In fact, November 1 became the second all-Ukrainian referendum that testified to the fact that our society would not venture aside, that it would never change the course that it had chosen eight years ago on December 1, 1991," said President Kuchma.

Source: "Kuchma says Ukraine must sweep aside its Communist past," by Roman Woronowycz, Kyiv Press Bureau, The Ukrainian Weekly, December 5, 1999, Vol. LXVII, No. 49.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 5, 2004, No. 49, Vol. LXXII

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