ANALYSIS: The downfall and discrediting of Ukraine's first president Kravchuk (01/02/05)

ANALYSIS

The downfall and discrediting of Ukraine's first president Kravchuk

by Taras Kuzio
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

Ukraine's first elected president, Leonid Kravchuk, has always had a romantic following in the Ukrainian diaspora. Many, particularly from the older generation, credit him for Ukraine's achievement of independent statehood, something they never expected to see in their lifetime.

Mr. Kravchuk spoke at a conference I organised at the University of Birmingham in 1996 and afterwards attended an event in my home organized by the Professional and Business Persons Association. Then he still held on to his "derzhavnyk" reputation. Times have moved on, however, and it is time we undertook a re-assessment of Mr. Kravchuk.

If Mr. Kravchuk had become an elder statesman when he left office in the summer of 1994 his reputation would have remained intact. Instead, he helped to build up one of three oligarchic clans centered on Kyiv. This clan's political roof became the Social Democratic Party - United (SDPU) led by Viktor Medvedchuk, who competes with Leonid Kuchma today for the status of most loathed politician in Ukraine.

The degree to which Mr. Kravchuk's reputation has collapsed could be seen by the decision of the prestigious National University Kyiv Mohyla Academy to withdraw the honorary doctorate it awarded to Mr. Kravchuk when he was president. The decision was in response to the mass fraud carried out by the pro-presidential camp during the second round of the presidential election. Mr. Medvedchuk and the SDPU, and therefore implictly Kravchuk, were intricately involved in this fraud.

Mr. Kravchuk's career and personality reveal a very wily and cynical politician, giving him the reputation of a sly fox. These traits are very common within the centrist political camp in Ukraine which is ideologically amorphous.

Members of the former ruling nomenklatura of Soviet Ukraine have long been good at survival. They jumped ship in 1990-1991 as national communists. In the 1990s they cooperated with the national democrats as they were still politically and economically weak.

With the entry of oligarchs in 1998-1999 into politics, the centrist camp felt strong enough to go it alone. President Kuchma's second term in office saw them attempt to monopolize politics and create an authoritarian regime. This would have been achieved if Viktor Yanukovych had succeeded Mr. Kuchma as Ukraine's president.

During Mr. Kuchma's second term in office, the national democrats, led by Viktor Yushchenko, went into opposition. The centrists shifted to cooperating with their former enemy, the Communists Party of Ukraine (CPU). This was clearly seen in the April 2001 parliamentary vote of no confidence in the Yushchenko government by the CPU and centrists.

The CPU-centrist alliance has grown in strength ever since. With Mr. Yushchenko elected president, the new opposition in the Verkhovna Rada will consist of the CPU, the SDPU and Mr. Yanukovych's Regions of Ukraine.

The Medvedchuk-Kravchuk SDPU attack Mr. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine as "Nashists," a play on the name "Nasha Ukraina" to sound like "Nazis." Mr. Kravchuk has returned to the lexicon used when he was in charge of ideology in the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR. The CPU have also adopted the derogatory term "Nashists."

It must be noted that Mr. Kravchuk left the CPU only at the last minute after the hard line putsch collapsed in Moscow in August 1991. As leader of the SDPU's parliamentary faction, he will now be working closely with Petro Symonenko's hard-line Communists against the Yushchenko presidency.

In the past Mr. Kravchuk has repeatedly ruled out cooperating with the CPU. This, however, was obviously deceitful as Mr. Kravchuk is willing to cooperate with anybody if that means his survival.

Mr. Kravchuk will be unable to explain his continued support for Ukraine's EU and NATO membership while belonging to the SDPU that has aligned itself with the pro-Russian CPU and Regions of Ukraine.

As noted by Oleksander Zinchenko, a former leading member of the SDPU and head of the Yushchenko campaign, the SDPU has become a staunch advocate of pro-Russian policies in Ukraine. Mr. Medvedchuk is instrumental in having encouraged Russia's wholesale interference in Ukraine's elections in support of Mr. Yanukovych. Russian "political technologists" working for Mr. Yanukovych were behind most of the dirty tricks in Ukraine's election, making it the dirtiest election ever.

Russian President Vladimir Putin took a personal interest in the outcome after lobbying by Mr. Medvedchuk, who looked upon him as an external guarantor of the oligarchic status quo. Mr. Kuchma's role as a neutral umpire presiding over oligarchic clans would be upset by a Yanukovych victory as he heads one of the clans.

The Medvedchuk-Kravchuk SDPU therefore sought to return Ukraine to its status in the 18th century when it was an autonomous Hetmanate in the tsarist empire. This Little Russianism, coupled with a willingness to cooperate with the neo-Stalinist CPU against Yushchenko, shows the degree to which former President Krawchuk has discredited his reputation.

Taras Kuzio is visiting professor at the Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University.

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