1998 Ukrainian parliamentary election

Ukraine became independent in 1991, amidst the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The period since 1991 had, by 1998, been marked by an economic crisis. At the peak of this crisis, during the previous parliamentary election in 1994, doubts existed as to the feasibility of Ukraine's survival as an independent state, according to political scientists Sarah Birch and Andrew Wilson.^[3] After Leonid Kuchma was elected as president that year, some improvements in the political situation (particularly regarding Russia–Ukraine relations, which had been strained as a result of disputes over the status of Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet, the supply of energy to Ukraine, and Ukraine's post-Soviet nuclear arsenal, which Kuchma saw relinquished with the finalisation of the Budapest Memorandum). Ukraine adopted a post-Soviet constitution in June 1996,^[4] with later amendments formally dating the next parliamentary election to March 1998.^[3]

The primary basis of Kuchma's support were the emerging business oligarchs (particularly the Dnipropetrovsk Mafia, a group of oligarchic and organised crime elements from Kuchma's native Dnipropetrovsk Oblast), and his presidency marked a "virtual corporate takeover" of Ukraine, according to Wilson. He had also initially been elected with the support of the left, who opposed the nation-building policies of Leonid Kravchuk. Kuchma's programme, however, had based in economic liberalisation from the outset of his 1994 campaign, and efforts to reform Ukraine's economy intensified in the period prior to the election. This led leftists to abandon their original support of Kuchma early into his presidency, characterising him as a puppet of the International Monetary Fund.^[5] Oleksandr Moroz, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada before 1998 and leader of the Socialist Party of Ukraine, was a strong opponent of Kuchma's privatisations and the IMF, while Kuchma's links to international organisations such as the IMF and positive relations with the West buoyed his support.^[6] Continued poor economic performance was a leading factor in the election; a poll two weeks prior to the election indicted that 66.2% of respondents viewed Kuchma's economic reforms as a failure, and the two most pressing issues to voters polled were non-payment of wages by the state (33.5%) and unemployment (27.2%).^[7]

At 9.5%, the third-largest issue for voters was corruption.^[7] Kuchma's presidency was marked by the growth of the Ukrainian mafia, with several formerly-communist officials from eastern Ukraine engaging with crime interests in order to enrich themselves.^[8] Another poll, conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, indicated that 59.6% of Ukrainians believed "almost all" or "most" People's Deputies were corrupt. Several parties were front organisations for major oligarchic-crime clans, including Hromada (tied to an anti-Kuchma branch of the Dnipropetrovsk Mafia led by Pavlo Lazarenko and Yulia Tymoshenko), the Razom coalition (comprising the Party of Labour and the Liberal Party of Ukraine,^[9] representing the Donetsk Clan), the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united) (connected to the Kyiv Seven and the ownership of FC Dynamo Kyiv) and the Party of Greens (which, despite having been founded as a legitimate party, was effectively sold by the party's leadership to banking interests prior to the election). Even parties which were not fronts for oligarchic or crime interests, such as the centre-right People's Movement of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Народний рух України, romanized: Narodnyi rukh Ukrainy, abbreviated Rukh) and the leftist parties, had seats on their proportional representation lists occupied by individuals associated with such groups.^[10]

The eleven^[13] major parties had widely varying political positions during the electoral campaign, with most being opposed to Kuchma's government.^[14] The eight parties ultimately elected into the Verkhovna Rada's proportional representation seats professed the following policies:^[15]

• Communist Party of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Комуністична партія України, romanized: Komunistychna partiia Ukrainy, KPU): abolition of the presidency of Ukraine; establishment of the Russian language as the second state language of Ukraine; Ukrainian accession to the Union State; opposition to the economic liberalisation, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and NATO. The party's leader is Petro Symonenko.
• People's Movement of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Народний рух України, romanized: Narodnyi rukh Ukrainy, Rukh): opposition to Kuchma's government and the left; support for economic and political reforms; pro-Western and centre-right. Highly-placed candidates on its party list included Viacheslav Chornovil (the party's leader and a former prisoner of conscience held by the Soviet Union), Minister of Foreign Affairs Hennadiy Udovenko, writer Ivan Drach and Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev.
• Socialist Party – Peasant Party (Ukrainian: Соціалістична партія України – Селянська партія України, romanized: Sotsialistychna partiia Ukrainy – Selianska partiia Ukrainy, SPU–SelPU): Strengthened relations with members of the Commonwealth of Independent States; state control of critical industries; opposition to privatisation of land. As a political alliance, it included members of both the Socialist Party of Ukraine (led by Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Oleksandr Moroz) and the Peasant Party of Ukraine (led by Kateryna Vashchuk and also including Rouslan Bodelan and Anatoliy Franchuk); the two parties at times held divergent views, with the Peasant Party being pro-Kuchma.
• Party of Greens of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Партія зелених України, romanized: Partiia zelenykh Ukrainy, PZU): Reduction of taxes; abolition of conscription; international neutrality; environmentalism.
• People's Democratic Party (Ukrainian: Народно-демократична партія, romanized: Narodno-demokratychna partiia, NDP): Privatisation; market economy; abolition of parliamentary immunity; European integration while retaining positive relations with Russia and members of the CIS. It was very pro-Kuchma.
• Hromada (Ukrainian: Громада): 50% reduction of taxes; restructuring of the executive government; anti-corruption. The party was largely a personal vehicle for Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko and a front organisation for the Dnipropetrovsk Mafia.^[10]
• Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Прогресивна соціалістична партія України, romanized: Prohresyvna sotsialistychn partiia Ukrainy, PSPU): abolition of the presidency; recognition of Belarus and Russia as Ukraine's strategic partners; granting worker cooperatives the exclusive right to nominate candidates for People's Deputies; strongly anti-IMF, anti-World Bank and anti-NATO; opposed to both the KPU and SPU–SelPU on the basis that neither were sufficiently left-wing.
• Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united) (Ukrainian: Соцiал-демократична партія України (об'єднана), romanized: Sotsial-demokratychna partiia Ukrainy (obiednana), SDPU(o)): Centrism; full employment; European integration while retaining positive relations with Russia. The party was a front organisation for the Kyiv Seven,^[10] and contained several national communist figures, including former President Leonid Kravchuk and former Prime Minister Yevhen Marchuk.^[16]

Interventions by Kuchma

Despite only vaguely advising voters to vote "against the left",^[17] Kuchma and individuals close to him have been accused by Birch and Wilson of significantly intervening in the 1998 election, both in order to create a spoiler effect for leftist parties^[17] and to ensure the victory of the pro-government People's Democratic Party, which was intended to exist as a people's party under the leadership of Prime Minister Valeriy Pustovoitenko.^[16]

Many of the parties contesting the election were intended to spoil the results of the leftist bloc. Among these was the Agrarian Party (established in opposition to the Peasant Party's then-undisputed control over the rural population) and three parties and political alliances^[a] were founded with the support of the government with the intention of undermining the KPU's support among trade unions and veterans. The KPU and SPU–SelPU accused the PSPU of being directly created and supported by Kuchma's government, and Communist and Socialist media regularly attacked it as such.^[18]

The emergence of former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko as a serious political opponent to Kuchma also led to Kuchma using legal measures to hinder him, including the instigating of corruption charges against him and the stripping of his parliamentary immunity. As a result of the prosecution, Lazarenko would eventually be forced to flee Ukraine before being arrested. Kuchma's government also used administrative and governmental resources to campaign for the NDP, to little success.^[19] State television channels broadcast in favour of the NDP, and individuals tied to Kuchma oversaw the split between Hromada and Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna party.^[20]

A total of 3,962 candidates were registered ahead of the election, of whom 1,717 (43.34%) were independents.^[21] Thirty parties or political alliances contested the election in total. Low threshold existed for ballot access, requiring 200,000 signatures (of which 10,000 were to come from 14 of the 26 administrative divisions of Ukraine). Little effort was made by authorities to verify signatures; in one instance, a Sumy Oblast newspaper reported that it had found signatures belonging to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, Chechen military commander and politician Dzhokhar Dudayev (both of whom were deceased by 1998) and President of Russia Boris Yeltsin, with all signatories declared as living in the same apartment block.^[22]

The ultimate result was a victory for the left, with the KPU slightly expanding its plurality. Leftist parties were generally supported by those from the three easternmost oblasts of Ukraine (Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv oblasts), as well as, in the case of the KPU in particular, in southern Ukraine. The SPU–SelPU alliance failed to break through in the south, but found unexpected support in the east. Western Ukraine, as well as the three westernmost oblasts of left-bank Ukraine (Chernihiv, Poltava and Sumy oblasts), were among the most unlikely oblasts to support the KPU.^[23] The SPU–SelPU alliance outperformed the KPU exclusively in Cherkasy Oblast (receiving 51.4%), but performed well across Ukraine, surpassing 30% of the vote in 12 oblasts. The Progressive Socialist Party was the next-highest-performing leftist party, but only managed to surpass 30% of the vote in Sumy Oblast. The Soyuz party, a leftist party in Crimea advocating for the region's annexation by Russia, was a notable case as a localist party in the left bloc that gained a significant portion of the region's vote (10.7%, behind only the KPU).^[24]

As in previous Ukrainian elections, ethnicity, language and religion also played a significant role in voting.^[25] The elderly, those with low levels of income, ethnic Russians and those belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) being more likely to support leftist parties. By contrast, those who were not ethnic Russians, those who did not belong to the UOC(MP) and those who were employed were more likely to vote for national-democratic parties. Younger people, those with high levels of income and individuals living in central Ukraine tended to support centrist parties. Among the centrist parties, the People's Democratic Party was extremely unpopular in the south in favour of Hromada and the Greens were unpopular in eastern Ukraine.^[26]

Many of the centrist parties were concentrated into specific regions; Hromada was widely supported in the Dnipropetrovsk Mafia's eponymous oblast,^[27] while the SDPU(o) excelled in Zakarpattia as a result of both vote buying by the Kyiv Seven^[16] and a local tradition of social democracy dating back to the 1930s. The Reforms and Order Party's support was largely concentrated in Lviv Oblast, though it failed to obtain a majority of the votes there. Among national-democratic and nationalist parties, Rukh saw as much dominance as the KPU on the left, being the only right-of-centre to surpass the 4% proportional representation threshold and winning nearly three times the vote as the next-largest right-wing party, the National Front [uk] coalition. Rukh's support was largely concentrated in western Ukraine, particularly in Galicia and Rivne Oblast, though in other western oblasts it performed well enough to keep the leftist vote share below 20%.^[28]

The election was most humiliating of all for the pro-Kuchma People's Democratic Party, which won only 5% of the vote and 29 seats in the Verkhovna Rada. The People's Democratic Party had, prior to the election, already been in a state of disarray, with the party's liberal, reformist faction increasingly frustrated by its closeness to Kuchma. Although it would manage to grow dramatically in the initial period of coalition-building following the election, it would eventually collapse, splitting into several parties within a year of the election.^[16]

KPU Rukh SPU–SelPU PZU NDP Hromada PSPU SDPU(o)

More information Party, Proportional ...

Party		Proportional			Constituency			Total seats	+/–
		Votes	%	Seats	Votes	%	Seats
	Communist Party of Ukraine	6,550,353	25.44	84	3,495,711	13.62	37	121	+35
	People's Movement of Ukraine	2,498,262	9.70	32	1,500,648	5.85	14	46	+26
	Socialist Party – Peasant Party	2,273,788	8.83	29	1,067,267	4.16	5	34	+1
	Party of Greens of Ukraine	1,444,264	5.61	19	196,044	0.76	0	19	+19
	People's Democratic Party	1,331,460	5.17	17	985,770	3.84	11	28	+24
	Hromada	1,242,235	4.82	16	880,073	3.43	8	24	New
	Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine	1,075,118	4.18	14	231,043	0.90	2	16	New
	Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united)	1,066,113	4.14	14	450,522	1.76	3	17	New
	Agrarian Party of Ukraine	978,330	3.80	0	784,287	3.06	9	9	New
	Reforms and Order Party	832,574	3.23	0	455,166	1.77	3	3	New
	Laborious Ukraine (GKU–UPS)	813,326	3.16	0	123,869	0.48	1	1	–1
	National Front (KUN–UKRP–URP)	721,966	2.80	0	642,125	2.50	5	5	–10
	Razom (LPU–PP)	502,969	1.95	0	309,371	1.21	1	1	–3
	Forward Ukraine! (KDS–UKDP)	461,924	1.79	0	129,378	0.50	2	2	+2
	Christian Democratic Party of Ukraine	344,826	1.34	0	190,783	0.74	2	2	+1
	Bloc of Democratic Parties – NEP (DPU–PEV)	326,489	1.27	0	275,460	1.07	1	1	–1
	Party of National Economic Development of Ukraine	250,476	0.97	0	28,418	0.11	0	0	New
	SLON – Social Liberal Association (Viche–MBR)	241,367	0.94	0	112,968	0.44	1	1	0
	Party of Regional Revival of Ukraine	241,262	0.94	0	204,631	0.80	2	2	New
	All-Ukrainian Party of Workers	210,622	0.82	0	57,463	0.22	0	0	New
	Soyuz	186,249	0.72	0	38,467	0.15	1	1	New
	All-Ukrainian Party of Women's Initiatives	154,650	0.60	0	18,208	0.07	0	0	New
	Republican Christian Party	143,496	0.56	0	70,064	0.27	0	0	New
	Ukrainian National Assembly	105,977	0.41	0	88,136	0.34	0	0	–1
	Social Democratic Party of Ukraine	85,045	0.33	0	36,670	0.14	0	0	–2
	Motherland Defenders Party	81,808	0.32	0	26,286	0.10	0	0	New
	Party of Spiritual, Economic and Social Progress	53,147	0.21	0	28,418	0.11	0	0	New
	Party of Muslims of Ukraine	52,613	0.20	0	1,342	0.01	0	0	New
	Fewer Words (SNPU–DSU)	45,155	0.18	0	65,760	0.26	1	1	0
	European Choice of Ukraine (LDPU–USDP)	37,118	0.14	0	59,474	0.23	0	0	0
	Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine				17,656	0.07	0	0	New
	Women's Party of Ukraine				15,867	0.06	0	0	New
	Party of Slavic Unity of Ukraine				12,470	0.05	0	0	0
	Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists				1,944	0.01	0	0	0
	Party of National Salvation of Ukraine				1,544	0.01	0	0	0
	Independents				11,148,333	43.43	111	111	–57
Vacant							5	5	–
Against all		1,396,592	5.42	–	1,915,531	7.46	–	–	–
Total		25,749,574	100.00	225	25,667,167	100.00	225	450	0
Valid votes		25,749,574	96.91		25,667,167	96.60
Invalid/blank votes		821,699	3.09		904,106	3.40
Total votes		26,571,273	100.00		26,571,273	100.00
Registered voters/turnout		37,540,092	70.78		37,540,092	70.78
Source: Nohlen & Stöver, University of Essex

Close

Kuchma and Rukh leader Viacheslav Chornovil, as well as other moderate politicians, noted that the results of the election, while a victory for the left, were not the most extensive possible victory.^[34] The results were disappointing for Rukh and the national democrats in general, with as they reached only 12.4% (only slightly above national results) in Kyiv, the party's traditional base outside of western Ukraine. Birch and Wilson describe the election as Chornovil's "last hurrah", noting that his romantic nationalism was under pressure from the pragmatism of younger Rukh members such as Oleksandr Lavrynovych and Yuriy Kostenko. The election highlighted problems related to the rights of repatriated Crimean Tatars and the abolition of provisions allowing for them to participate in elections and achieve representation at the regional level. As a result of Rukh advocating for a pro-Crimean Tatar policy and placing civil rights leader Dzhemilev at a high position on their party list, Crimean Tatars largely turned out to vote for Rukh.^[35]

A series of under-the-table bargains began in the days and months after the election, with the end result being the expansion of the NDP from its original position of 29 seats to a total of 93 seats. Kuchma's rivals were pushed out of the political scene in the months following the election: following his flight to the United States to escape corruption charges, the Verkhovna Rada voted to lift his parliamentary immunity in February 1999. Following Lazarenko's exile, newspapers published documents alleging that close Kuchma ally Volodymyr Horbulin had formulated a plan for a coordinated campaign against Hromada, utilising tax authorities, the police and the Prosecutor General. Moroz, who had been the sole major politician to vote against lifting Lazarenko's immunity, was subsequently subjected to a campaign of harassment by pro-Kuchma media. The pro-Kuchma parties blocked Moroz's attempts to regain the office of Verkhovna Rada Chairman for a period of nearly four months,^[36] with the Rada going through 19 rounds of voting before finally deciding on Oleksandr Tkachenko, a member of the Peasant Party and former Soviet apparatchik, on 7 July 1998.^[37] A $70 million loan to an agricultural concern owned by Tkachenko was written off prior to his election as Chairman, leading Wilson to conclude that he was "widely assumed to be in the president's debt".^[36]

In December 1998, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine issued a ruling, stating that elected People's Deputies could freely choose their party affiliation, rather than being constrained to the eight elected proportional representation parties. The NDP, buckling under the weight of its greatly-expanded membership, soon fractured into several parties, as did Hromada; they were later joined by the SPU–SelPU and, eventually, Rukh,^[38] which broke into two factions shortly before Chornovil's sudden death in March 1999.^[39]