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president.
The Association of Entrepreneurs was an outgrowth of Soviet economic leaders who in
the new Ukraine, post Soviet Ukraine, was advancing the interests of the red directors.
This group of red directors became the most powerful Ukrainian political group, both
behind the scenes and of record from 1991 through, I'd say, about 1997, when the
oligarchs took over the leadership. Some oligarchs were former red directors, but the new
era, capitalist oligarchs as a whole are characterized by having far more experience and
use of, the new economy and banks. The oligarchs created new networks of banks and
other economic institutions, to support the acquisition of further assets. The oligarchs’
objective was personal wealth accumulation. The oligarchs concentrated to great effect,
accumulating money by acquiring state assets and using that first level of acquisition as
leverage to make even more money.
Q: Was that money going anywhere else, or to Swiss bank accounts?
MILLER: Yes, it was going wherever money would produce the most return. They were
bright, and informed themselves about where to go to the place where they would get the
most money, particularly for themselves.
Q: So this was not a matter of reinvestment.
MILLER: It was not reinvestment, it was self aggrandizement.
[END SIDE]
Q: You were saying it was interesting …
MILLER: How ready the red directors were when they became oligarchs, to shed the
Soviet legacy of support for workers. They shed the burden of infrastructure support for
workers – the hospitals, the kindergartens, the schools, the cultural centers, social
infrastructure, the part of the typical Soviet industrial complex, which included the
building and maintenance of apartment houses, playgrounds, movie theaters, clinics. The
work place took care of its workers from birth to death, including burials. The Soviet
place of work provided that kind of all-inclusive security. With a new “free market”
system they shed those obligations and became bottom line efficient and left the workers
adrift. These features of economic transition, accounts for some of the discontent on the
part of most Ukrainians.
Let’s return to Kuchma. Kuchma, as the president of the red directors Association of
Entrepreneurs, used that as platform for his political base. It was his political base. In
1994, he ran for president against Kravchuk, Leonid Kravchuk, the first president who
had been a second-level nomenclatura. Kuchma had been higher in Soviet rank and
higher in the esteem of the populace than Kravchuk, and this Soviet qualitative difference
had an effect on the outcome of the elections. Also, Kravchuk was a decided and overt
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