Leonid Makarovych

As President, Kravchuk could be criticized, especially for his handling of the economy. His reluctance to embark on economic reform gave the existing power structures, bureaucrats, and official captains of socialist industry time to adapt in such a way that it will be well-nigh politically impossible for anyone to turn this country around economically. But perhaps it could not have been otherwise; following the Polish model of shock therapy would have brought him into conflict with the very nomenklatura from which he came, and who knows whether the country's stability could have been preserved. Besides, nobody really understood the nature of the Ukrainian economy and its problems back then.

Leonid Kravchuk is a classical consensus politician, precisely what this country needed in making the transition from Soviet republic to independent state. He has never been afraid to talk openly with anyone about anything, and he has never stopped short of trying to find a solution to a given problem all parties could live with, in his favorite word, to find accord. Historians will write that he held this country together when it could have fallen apart. It still could. His failure to win reelection may turn out to be one of the central tragedies in independent Ukraine's short history.

One should also note two similarities between the former President's interview and that of Petro Symonenko, also in this issue: that the Ukrainian political process has become totally venalized and that the choice in the next presidential election will come down to one between an ineffectual incumbent and the hard Left. If the latter is true, it would be an even bigger tragedy than the former, for that would leave the country completely without hope: either another half-decade of ineffectual pseudo-reforms or turning into something akin to Belarus. Leonid Makarovych would do well to reconsider whether a third option is really so unrealistic as he seems to think, if only because it is so painfully and obviously necessary.