Lanovy, Volodymyr

Lanovy, Volodymyr [Лановий, Володимир; Lanovyj], b 17 June 1952 in Kyiv. Politician, businessman, and economist. At various times permanent representative of the president to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine (2000–2); president of the Center for Market Reforms and of the All-Ukrainian Association of Private Entrepreneurs and Owners; and member of the President’s Higher Economic Council. Formerly acting head of the State Property Fund, presidential adviser on matters of economic policy, candidate for president (in 1994), minister of the economy, and a parliamentarian. Graduating as an industrial economist from the Kyiv Institute of the National Economy in 1973, he obtained his doctoral degree in 1994 from the Kyiv State Economic University (now Kyiv National Economic University) with a dissertation entitled ‘The Market and Renewal.’ He began work in industry in his specialty in 1973, and in 1986 joined the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In the run-up to independence, he authored the Law on the Economic Independence of the Ukrainian SSR, passed by the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR on 3 August 1990. From May 1991, Lanovy was state minister for property and entrepreneurship. Between March and July 1992, he was a vice-prime minister in the government of Vitold Fokin and wrote the economic reform program submitted by Ukraine to the International Monetary Fund. Until 11 July 1992, he was minister of the economy. From August 1992 until 1994, he was head of the Center for Market Reforms; as such, he entered the 1994 presidential election promising within a year to pull the country out of its economic crisis and to make it a European state within four. Despite being seen as a Ukrainian John F. Kennedy for his youthful image and style, he managed only fourth place with 9.3 percent of the vote. In March of the same year he was elected to the Supreme Council of Ukraine from a Kyiv constituency, earned a place on the budget committee, and joined the Reforms caucus. From February to November 1995, he was a member of the political council of the Liberal Party of Ukraine, but later left that party. He was also in the leadership of the Nova Ukraina association. In June 1999, he became a member of the Popular Movement of Ukraine—NRU (successor to Rukh).

After the Orange Revolution and the election of Viktor Yushchenko as president, Lanovy again served (2005–6) as presidential adviser and representative at the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. He was elected to the Supreme Council of Ukraine in 2006 as no. 39 on the Our Ukraine bloc’s list. Beginning in 2008, he was elected to the Kyiv City Council where he was a member of the Mykola Katerynchuk bloc. In 2012, he returned to the Supreme Council as a representative of the Our Ukraine—People’s Self Defence alliance. From then on he became a frequent and outspoken critic of the government’s economic policies, which he saw as leading to ever-deepening crises because of mismanagement and corruption. He was particularly unsparing of every president from Viktor Yanukovych to Volodymyr Zelensky without exception or favor. A life-long liberal with an admiration for the Washington Consensus, the neoliberal formula of austerity favored by the United States of America and the International Monetary Fund as a condition of assisting needy countries, he castigated oligarchic control of the economy, advocated for economic as well as administrative reform, and lamented his country’s inborn inertia on its way to a proper market economy. Despite his evidently superior expertise in economics and public policy Lanovy was never invited back into government.

Bohdan Harasymiw

[This article was written in 2024.]