Industrialist Is Chosen as Ukrainian Prime Minister

Leonid Kuchma, director of the world’s largest missile and rocket plant, became Ukraine’s new prime minister Tuesday in what was seen as a victory for the country’s powerful industrial lobby.

As hundreds of police officers clashed with vastly outnumbered student protesters outside Parliament, President Leonid Kravchuk spoke for his nominee, saying: “He is a serious businessman, not only in words but in deeds. (His) factory has never asked for government help. They make proposals, and they work.”

Kuchma, 54, was approved by 316 of 377 of his colleagues in Parliament after brief debate. Twenty-three deputies opposed him; the remainder abstained or were absent. An undistinguished legislator, Kuchma is best known as general director of the sprawling government-owned Southern Machine Building Factory, commonly known in Ukrainian as Pivdenmash, at Dnepropetrovsk.

Although he told Parliament that he would not have a definite economic reform plan until a new Cabinet is formed, Kuchma said he is ready to “take responsibility for the unpopular step” to come. “Ukraine does not have an economic crisis. It has a catastrophe,” the industrialist warned.

“First aid” is called for, Kuchma said, and only government regulations, with priority given to producers, can stabilize the situation and prevent a “social explosion,” he said.

Careful to distinguish government regulation from government administration of the economy, Kuchma called for an evolutionary approach to the market in which the state would maintain a controlling interest in large industries when Ukraine’s long-awaited privatization program takes effect. The government should not, he said, “treat state industry like sacrificial cows fated for death.”

Kuchma also called for closer economic ties with the other former Soviet republics, especially Russia, saying, “Anti-Russian policies have led to anti-Ukrainian economic consequences.”

Kuchma’s nomination surprised many observers who had expected Valentin Simonenko, the acting prime minister, to replace Vitold Fokin, who resigned last week as Parliament prepared a vote of no confidence in his government. When selecting Fokin’s successor, Kravchuk reportedly bowed to pressure from the directors of state-owned industries and collective farms who dominate Parliament. Their resolute conservatism is what prompted the several hundred students to protest outside, demanding new elections.

But opposition deputy Ivan Zayets said the “directorate,” as the industrialists are collectively known, may be surprised by the prime minister they got. “Kuchma is in a different league from the rest of them,” Zayets said in an interview.

The Nuclear Weapons Data Book published by the Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council calls Pivdenmash “the largest integrated facility of its type in the world.”

In a celebrated effort to convert at least part of the facility’s enormous productive might to civilian needs, Kuchma steered Pivdenmash into producing trolley cars and microwave ovens last spring.