http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110006076
 From America With Love
Ukraine's new first lady knows what freedom really means.

Monday, December 27, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST

In the most peaceful revolution since South Africa ended its 
apartheid regime by electing Nelson Mandela president in 1994, 
Ukraine has just elected opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko 
president of the former Soviet satellite republic. The victory comes 
for the pro-Western leader after a dirty campaign that saw him 
poisoned and only after hundreds of thousands of demonstrators filled 
the streets to protest voter-fraud. "We peacefully, beautifully, 
elegantly and without any drops of blood changed Ukraine," Mr. 
Yushchenko told cheering supporters.

What many Westerners do not realize, however, is when Mr. Yushchenko 
takes the seat of power, at his side will be a tough minded, savvy 
American-raised businesswoman. His wife, Kateryna Chumachenko 
Yushchenko, is the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants who grew up 
steeped in the traditions of her ancestral homeland.

Mrs. Yushchenko was raised in suburban Chicago as the daughter of an 
electrician and seamstress. During World War II, her parents were 
forced to immigrate to Germany and work as slave labor. They came to 
the U.S. in 1956 at the invitation of a Ukrainian Orthodox church. 
She grew up speaking Ukrainian at home, learning the national dances 
and attending a Ukrainian school and Orthodox church. "My parents 
felt they had to keep alive the culture and traditions they thought 
were being suppressed by the Soviet Union," she told me.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s she worked in the human rights 
office of the U.S. State Department. She also worked for the first 
President Bush in the Treasury Department. But her dream was always 
to help Ukraine become independent. So after the collapse of the 
Soviet Union in 1991 she moved to Kiev. Her business degree from the 
University of Chicago helped her land a job with KPMG, the U.S. 
international auditing company, and she prospered training the 
country's economists in Western practices. She met Viktor Yushchenko 
when he was part of a delegation of central bankers she brought to 
Chicago. "He understood free markets, had a firm faith in God and 
knew what the right path for the country should be," she told me. The 
two married in 1998, and they now have three children.

It is the strong bond he has with his wife that has helped Mr. 
Yushchenko through the tough campaign and it will likely be his 
relationship with her that will help him have a successful 
presidency. Perhaps the darkest moment for Mr. Yushchenko came this 
fall when he was poisoned. At first it seemed to be a case of the 
flu. His wife recalls him coming home one night during the 
presidential campaign and saying he felt sick. She noticed a strange 
metallic taste in his mouth when she kissed him. It turned out to be 
dioxin, a chemical compound found in Agent Orange and a well known 
poison.

Mr. Yushchenko has largely recovered, although the poison has left 
his face disfigured and the government has continued a three-year 
campaign to discredit him and his wife. After he was poisoned, the 
state prosecutor opened an investigation into the incident and then 
tried smearing Mr. Yushchenko by claiming he had a disfiguring case 
of herpes.

Tape recordings made by a disgruntled bodyguard for President Leonid 
Kuchma show that the president personally ordered a disinformation 
campaign against the Yushchenkos. Mr. Yushchenko was portrayed as a 
fascist puppet of Western bankers and Kateryna as an active CIA 
agent. She responded by winning a libel judgment against a Russian 
television station that accused her of disloyalty to Ukraine. But the 
government has refused to process her application for Ukrainian 
citizenship.

Now that Mr. Yushchenko is to become president, it's likely he'll be 
able to push through more than his wife's citizenship application. He 
helped implement some free-market reforms when he served as prime 
minister for 16 months between 1999 and 2001 before being ousted by 
hard-liners in Parliament. Now he has a popular mandate at his back 
as well as international support, which has only increased with the 
success of his "orange revolution." His wife has also proved 
invaluable by introducing him to contacts in the West.

All this adds up to a rare opportunity for Mr. Yushchenko. Since its 
independence in 1991, Ukraine's 48 million people have seesawed 
between forming greater ties with the West or lurching back into 
becoming a vassal state of Russia. One out of six people are 
ethnically Russian. Still, a clear majority of voters now want the 
corrupt, pro-Moscow clique surrounding outgoing President Kuchma out 
of the government. Yulia Timoshenko, a charismatic ally of Mr. 
Yushchenko, says their time is up. She told reporters: "I think the 
key word for them in Sunday's exit polls was 'exit.' "

The challenge will be to move Ukraine towards a free-market economy. 
Mrs. Yushchenko makes clear that her husband makes all of his own 
political decisions, but she will no doubt be a valuable asset to 
him. "She is one of the brightest, most dedicated conservatives I 
have ever known," says Bruce Bartlett, a former official in the 
Treasury Department under the first President Bush. "Anyone who met 
Kathy quickly discovered that creating a free, successful Ukraine was 
her primary mission in life, to the exclusion of almost everything 
else."

Now the challenge facing Ukraine is to make the leap towards becoming 
a democratic society truly governed by the rule of law. Mrs. 
Yushchenko is realistic about the obstacles facing her husband and 
his team. "[Some] people are making a lot of money off the current 
system," she told ABC News. "The last thing they want is for the 
system to change and for the economy to be a free market economy 
where the general population benefits rather than a small group of 
people at the top."

Cynics may say that since Ukraine has never been a true democracy, 
reforming it will be impossible. But those are the same people who 
never predicted that hundreds of thousands of people would fill the 
streets of Kiev and other cities and force a new election. 
Nonetheless it happened. What happens next is now up to Mr. 
Yushchenko.
-- 



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