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1994 in Ukraine was marked by a period of mass privatization, vouchers and financial pyramids. The country then won the first Olympic “gold”. Also in 1994, the first televised debates took place and Ukrainians elected a new president. In addition, this year was marked by the signing of the Budapest Memorandum and nuclear disarmament.
We tell about it in the new issue of the documentary series “30 years of Independence” on the UA TV channel.
On April 21, 1994, President Leonid Kravchuk signed a decree “On the introduction into cash circulation of privatization property certificates”. Large companies are turning into joint stock companies, and people have a new “currency” – the vouchers. The owner of the paper has the right to his share in the state property. According to the most modest estimates, one such piece of paper is trillions of rubles.
“Once you were taken away and you worked for the CPSU for free, now, by the logic of things, because you created all this with your work, you have the right to receive a part of this property in the form of a share. Privatization came for this. France and Great Britain did the same thing, it’s not something new, they did it in the Czech Republic as well, in Hungary” – says Oleksandr Okhrimenko, an economist and president of the Ukrainian Analytical Center.
In the 90’s you could meet people with “I will sell a voucher” signs near the Kyiv department store “Ukraine”. At that time, few people wondered why someone was buying these seemingly insignificant papers.
“Many people did not understand at all what shares are, what privatization is. Despite the agitation, it was quite a pun” – says Oleksandr Okhrimenko.
Serhiy Oksanych was one of the first to orient himself in the early 1990s. He founded an asset management company – helped citizens get rid of obscure papers.
“We bought certificates from people and they received money. We found a legal form how to do it. We were the first to provide such a service. The market price of the voucher was somewhere between USD 8 and USD 10, somewhere like that. For some, it was a lot of money in the hungry 90’s” – said Serhiy Oksanych, president of an investment fund management company.
This “considerable” money by the standards of the 90’s will soon turn into huge capital.
In addition, at the `94 Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway, 16-year-old Oksana Bayul won gold in singles – the first Olympic medal in the history of country’s independence. The organizers did not believe in her victory so much that they could not even immediately start the award ceremony – they would search for the country’s flag and anthem for a long time.
On January 12, 1994, Bill Clinton visited Kyiv for the first time. This short-term visit was called “Boryspil landing”. The American president flew for literally a couple of hours on the way to Moscow. The nuclear disarmament of Ukraine actually begins with the press conference of Leonid Kravchuk and Bill Clinton.
The security of a nuclear-free Ukraine is officially promised by the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom, which will sign a memorandum in Budapest in late 1994.
1994 was also the year when Ukraine’s democratic change of government took place for the first time. Who will win – Leonid Kravchuk or Leonid Kuchma – it was difficult to predict even when voting in the second round.
