Leonid Danylovych Kuchma (, ; born 9 August 1938) is a Ukrainian politician who served as the second president of Ukraine from 19 July 1994 to 23 January 2005. The only president of Ukraine to serve two terms, his presidency was marked by economic stabilization and an improvement in Russia–Ukraine relations, but at the same time was accompanied by democratic backsliding and growth of the influence of Ukrainian oligarchs, as well as several scandals.
After a successful career as a rocket engineer and businessman in the Soviet Union, Kuchma began his political career in 1990, when he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament); he was re-elected in 1994. He served as Prime Minister of Ukraine between October 1992 and September 1993. Kuchma took office after winning the 1994 presidential election against his rival, incumbent President Leonid Kravchuk. Kuchma won re-election for an additional five-year term in 1999. Corruption accelerated after Kuchma's election in 1994, but in 2000–2001, his power began to weaken in the face of exposures in the media.Adrian Karatnycky, "Ukraine's Orange Revolution," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 84, No. 2 (March – April 2005), pp. 35–52 in JSTOR
Kuchma's administration began a campaign of media censorship in 1999, leading to arrests of journalists, the death of Georgiy Gongadze, and the subsequent Cassette Scandal and mass protests. The Ukrainian economy continued to decline until 1999, whereas growth was recorded since 2000, bringing relative prosperity to some segments of urban residents. During his presidency, Ukrainian-Russian ties began to improve.Robert S. Kravchuk, "Kuchma as Economic Reformer," Problems of Post-Communism Vol. 52#5 September–October 2005, pp 48–58 Kuchma declined to seek a third term in office, instead supporting Party of Regions candidate Viktor Yanukovych for the 2004 election. Following public protests over the alleged electoral fraud which escalated into the Orange Revolution, Kuchma took a neutral stance and was a mediator between Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych. Between 2014 and 2020, Kuchma was a special presidential representative of Ukraine at the quasi peace talks regarding the war in Donbas.
Kuchma's legacy has proven controversial, and he has been described as authoritarian by various sources. Widespread corruption and media censorship under Kuchma's administration continue to have an impact on Ukraine today, and he has been accused of promoting oligarchism.
Early life and family Leonid Danylovych Kuchma was born in the village of Chaikyne in rural Chernihiv Oblast on 9 August 1938 to Danylo Prokopovych and Paraskoviia Trokhymivna Kuchma. The origins of Kuchma's family are unclear, though his surname is most common in the western Lviv Oblast, and after his election as president various parts of Ukraine claimed to have been the original location of his family. One myth from Drohobych claimed that an individual named Danylo Kuchma left the town for Dnieper Ukraine in 1927, while western Ukraine was ruled by Poland and Ukrainisation policies were in effect in the Ukrainian SSR. Biographer Kost Bondarenko has cast doubt on these stories, saying that they are likely common in various regions of Ukraine as a result of Kuchma's unclear lineage. Kuchma was born into a family of peasants and is the youngest of three children. Both of his older siblings worked as coal miners. Kuchma's early life was shaped by the confluence of Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian culture in northern Chernihiv Oblast; the mixed Russian–Ukrainian Surzhyk dialect was the most frequently used language in the region.
Danylo Kuchma was an ideological communist who joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. He was mobilised into the Red Army shortly after Operation Barbarossa, and fought in the 229th Rifle Division. He died at a field hospital in the village of Novoselitsy, Novgorod Oblast in 1944, and his remains were identified in 1997. Leonid lived with his mother during the Nazi German occupation, and after Chaikyne was destroyed by the Germans in a retaliatory attack against Soviet partisans in nearby Bryansk, they fled to neighbouring , where Paraskoviia's sister was working as a teacher. Karasi was later subjected to aerial bombardment and artillery attacks amidst the German retreat, again displacing the Kuchma family, this time into the forests. After the war's end, the Kuchma family moved onto a kolkhoz, where they lived in a hut with an area of . The remainder of Kuchma's childhood was dominated by destitute poverty, particularly during the Soviet famine of 1946–1947, which significantly affected eastern Ukraine.
Kuchma joined the CPSU in 1960, graduating from Dnipropetrovsk State University (now the Oles Honchar Dnipro National University) with a degree in engineering physics the same year. As one of the first students at the university studying physics (a position of increased importance as a result of the nuclear arms race during the Cold War), Kuchma came under the patronage of Leonid Brezhnev, then First Secretary of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, and the defence industry Kuchma sought employment in was a crucial part of Brezhnev's Dnipropetrovsk Mafia patronage network. Kuchma holds a Candidate of Engineering Sciences degree, and was a professor at Dnipropetrovsk State University after his graduation. The topic of his thesis remains classified as of 2007, though Bondarenko has posited that it may have been about missile launch facilities for the R-36 missile under development at the time Kuchma would have written his thesis. An apocryphal claim states that early in his career Kuchma was nicknamed for his short stature and alcoholism; biographer Gennady Korzh has disputed this, noting that documents from the KGB, which continually monitored Kuchma due to his career in the rocket industry, never alluded to such a thing.
Engineering and business career After graduation, Kuchma worked in the field of aerospace engineering for the Dnipropetrovsk-based Pivdenne Design Bureau, which designed missiles and space rockets for the Soviet Union. At the age of 28 he served as testing director at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and he was later secretary of the Communist Party committee at Pivdenne. As one of the designers of the R-36 missile, Kuchma was awarded the Lenin Prize. Kuchma also worked in the Soviet space programme under Sergei Korolev for some months in 1961, amidst the Space Race, before returning to Pivdenne to work as a rocket designer.
Kuchma became the director of rocket manufacturer Pivdenmash in 1986, succeeding Oleksandr Makarov. He had previously served as head of the party committee at the company from 1976 to 1982. Pivdenmash was the Soviet Union's main manufacturer for intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as the main supplier for the country's space programme. By the time he resigned as the company's director in 1992, Kuchma had become a red director and a member of the nomenklatura "par excellence", according to human rights activist Adrian Karatnycky.
Early political career Kuchma was serving as head of a committee of Komsomol members at Pivdenne in 1961 when he was appointed head of the Komsomol in Dnipropetrovsk's Industrialnyi District. That summer, he was sent to a kolkhoz to organise weed control efforts (as was a popular summer activity in the Komsomol). Most of those working under Kuchma were young women.
While working on the kolkhoz, Kuchma fell in love with the Russian-born Lyudmila Talalayeva, and presented her with a bouquet on 19 June 1961. The two married the next year. Talalayeva was the adopted daughter of Gennady Tumanov, chief of technology at Pivdenmash and later a low-level minister. The Ukrainian Independent Information Agency posited in 2007 that Kuchma's marriage into Tumanov's family benefited his career. Bondarenko argues against such allegations, citing individuals close to Kuchma as saying that Tumanov was a Stalinist who disliked nepotism.
Kuchma was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1976, the same year that he became head of the Communist Party committee at Pivdenmash. He was a delegate to the 27th and 28th Congresses of the CPSU.
By 1989, Ukraine was in the midst of a popular revolution against the Soviets. Though it was centred around Lviv in the west, the revolution's supporters were increasingly travelling throughout Ukraine spreading rhetoric against Soviet rule, which the Ukrainian Soviet government failed to provide a popular alternative to. With the survival of communism in question, Kuchma was faced with a choice between further integrating himself into Ukrainian political structures or leaving Ukraine for Russia to continue his business career. He ultimately decided to fully enter politics, and in December 1989 declared his intention to run for the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR at the 1990 election.
Kuchma was elected to the Supreme Soviet in 1990, representing Dnipropetrovsk's Krasnohvardiiskyi District (now Chechelivskyi District). At the time, he described himself as an ethnic Russian. During the 1991 Soviet coup attempt Kuchma was in Dnipropetrovsk; according to Bondarenko, while he did not actively back the putschist State Committee on the State of Emergency, he was prepared to support the committee as the new Soviet government. After the failure of the coup attempt, Kuchma voted in favour of the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, saying of the coup, "We snuck by this time, but why should the fate of Ukraine further depend on events occuring beyond her borders?" He endorsed Ihor Yukhnovskyi in the 1991 Ukrainian presidential election; the election was won by Leonid Kravchuk, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet.
Premiership
Ukraine's independence and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, unlike in the cases of the formerly Soviet-aligned states of Central Europe, presented the challenge of building previously nonexistent state and economic institutions. Kravchuk, as well as Vitold Fokin, the prime minister of Ukraine appointed after the 1990 election, were faced with hyperinflation, economic collapse and the growth of organised crime. Kravchuk's efforts to build a centralised state were rejected by a coalition of industrialists and pre-independence regional elites. As a result of the power struggle, Fokin was forced to resign, and the group of business and local bosses pushed Kravchuk to appoint Kuchma in his place. Two other individuals (Valentyn Symonenko of Odesa and Azovstal Iron and Steel Works director Oleksandr Bulianda) were publicly floated for the position, but after Zaporizhstal director Vitaliy Satskyi publicly expressed his desire for Kuchma to become prime minister, he was confirmed by the Verkhovna Rada (the parliament and successor to the Supreme Soviet) on 13 October 1992.
Kuchma's government included five anti-communist national democrats: Yukhnovskyi, Oleksandr Yemets, Viktor Pynzenyk, Taras Stetskiv and Mykola Zhulynskyi. Besides the inclusion of individuals from the anti-government Democratic Bloc, the government included several members of the Dnipropetrovsk Mafia patronage network, as well as other business figures from the Donbas. Seventeen members of the new government maintained their positions from the Fokin government.