From Soviet economic planner to independent Ukraine’s first prime minister
In 2016, the man who had signed away the USSR revealed his own grief: 'As a man, I'm ashamed to admit it, but when Crimea was annexed, I cried like a child.'
Vitold Fokin was a Ukrainian Soviet economic official who began as a mining engineer and experienced both the operation of a planned economy and the pressures of state transformation. He led Ukraine’s government around independence while confronting economic crisis and the collapse of the Union. In December 1991, he signed the Belovezha Accords for Ukraine alongside Leonid Kravchuk, helping establish the post-Soviet order. Late in life, his controversial positions in the Donbas negotiations ended his public role.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1954–1963Mining engineer and manager in the Luhansk region
- 1963–1971Manager in the Donbas anthracite industry
- 1971–1987Department head and deputy chair of Ukraine’s State Planning Committee
- 1987–1990Deputy chair of Ukraine’s Council of Ministers and head of the State Planning Committee
- 1990–1991Chair of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR
- 1991–1992First prime minister of Ukraine
- 1991Ukrainian signatory of the Belovezha Accords
- 2020First deputy head of Ukraine’s delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group
Related historical events
Coupon currency and the dispute over leaving the ruble zone
Appointed prime minister in October 1990, Fokin promised to introduce a market economy but placed emphasis on coordinating Ukraine’s economic policies with those of the Russian Federation and Belarus. After Ukraine became independent, his government introduced the coupon as a quasi-currency and rationing system. The Encyclopedia of Ukraine credits this measure with preventing economic collapse, while recording that Fokin resigned in September 1992 over what he regarded as the premature introduction of the hryvnia and Ukraine’s departure from the Russian ruble zone. The timing and terms of monetary separation were therefore a central issue in his government’s course.
The economic situation was unstable. A 1993 World Bank research paper, drawing on its own Kyiv retail-price surveys and wage data, reported that food prices rose about fifteenfold in 1992 while nominal wages increased by less than tenfold, and that real wages fell sharply. The authors wrote that the Ukrainian currency lost more than 40 percent of its value against the dollar on the black market in September and October 1992. The paper does not isolate the effects of Fokin’s individual policies, but documents the scale of the inflation and currency crisis confronting the government around the time he left office.