29 Facts About Leonid Kravchuk

Leonid Kravchuk was the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada and a People's Deputy of Ukraine serving in the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine faction.

Leonid Kravchuk was defeated by his former prime minister, Leonid Kuchma, who then served as president for two terms.

Leonid Makarovych Kravchuk was born on 10 January 1934 in the village of Velykyi Zhytyn to an ethnic Ukrainian peasant family.

Leonid Kravchuk's father served in the Polish army during the 1930s, and later he and his wife worked for the local osadniks.

Leonid Kravchuk married a mathematics teacher, Antonina Mykhailivna Mishura, in 1957.

Leonid Kravchuk went to a vocational school before studying Marxist political economy at Kyiv University.

Leonid Kravchuk graduated at 24 and became a political economy teacher in Chernivtsi, in southwest Ukraine, before entering politics.

Leonid Kravchuk joined the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1958 and rose through the ranks of the party and of its agitprop department.

Leonid Kravchuk took part in the International Visitor Leadership Program, a professional exchange run by the US State Department.

Leonid Kravchuk became a member of the Ukrainian Communist Party Bureau in 1989, and on 23 July 1990, became Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR, becoming the republic's nominal head of state.

On 24 October 1990, the monopoly of the Communist Party of Ukraine on power was abolished, and thus, Leonid Kravchuk became not only the nominal, but the actual head of the republic.

Participants in the Belovezha talks said Leonid Kravchuk rejected any efforts to keep the Soviet Union going with reforms.

Leonid Kravchuk achieved and strengthened the formal sovereignty of the country.

Leonid Kravchuk took a pro-European stance, developing relations with the West and signing a cooperation accord with the European Union.

Leonid Kravchuk refused to retain the common armed forces and currency inside the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Leonid Kravchuk ran for a second term as president in 1994 but was defeated by Kuchma, with his loss being attributed to the rampant graft and the declining economy.

Leonid Kravchuk served as a member of the Verkhovna Rada from 1994 until the 2006 Ukrainian parliamentary election.

On 25 September 2009, Leonid Kravchuk declared during an interview with the newspaper Den that he left SDPU and became unaffiliated again.

Leonid Kravchuk explained this based on the fact that his former party decided to join the Bloc of Left and Center-left Forces to run for the 2010 presidential elections.

Leonid Kravchuk was indignant due to the fact that the political council of the party decided to accomplish that behind the closed doors in non-democratic order.

Leonid Kravchuk called it [the] "block as the artificial union without any perspectives".

Leonid Kravchuk endorsed Yuliya Tymoshenko during the 2010 presidential elections campaign.

Leonid Kravchuk explained his shift in support from Yanukovych to Tymoshenko was caused because he felt Yanukovych "turned his back" on all the issues Leonid Kravchuk wanted him to address as president: the Ukrainian language, culture, and the Holodomor.

Leonid Kravchuk maintained this position until February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Leonid Kravchuk was reportedly in ill health by this time.

On 10 May 2022, a family member told the Ukrainian News Agency that Leonid Kravchuk had died at the age of 88, after a long illness.

Leonid Kravchuk's death was confirmed by unnamed officials in Kyiv, as well as Andriy Yermak, head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office.

Leonid Kravchuk died a week after Belarus's Stanislav Shushkevich, another signatory to the Belovezh Accords, died in Minsk.

Leonid Kravchuk is often associated as a key figure in achieving Ukraine's independence and in giving up Ukraine's nuclear arsenal.