He is not a reticent type, but nor is he expressly straightforward. He is mild mannered and very much on the academic side - traits seldom found in a politician - betraying his scholarly nature. Like many other academics, Mr. Lytvyn does not like to make public his inner world or private life. However, he willingly gave straight answers to The Ukrainian's straight questions. In a word, meet the unknown side of Volodymyr Lytvyn!

The Ukrainian: Mr. Lytvyn, have you ever cursed the day you agreed to occupy the Speaker's seat?

Volodymyr Lytvyn: A good question. Now and then I ask myself what I'm doing in that seat. Believe me, I never thought I would be Speaker. I've never walked over dead bodies or plotted against anyone. It is a whim of fate that a fellow from an ordinary family should find himself in such high office. Every time, climbing another rung on the career ladder, I'd think for God's sake, what made you get into all this, you had your life and your work and now here you are, a perfect rookie to be skinned alive by all those sharks. Sometimes I curse myself. I could have lived like everybody else, raising children, staying with the family, and reading as much as I liked. We'll all end at the cemetery, except that my Speaker's grave probably will be a bit deeper and the funeral will be with state honours. Life passes quickly and I keep postponing things I should have done by now. Yet I shouldn't complain, really. Every day I go to the Verkhovna Rada the way a student goes to take an examination, but taking an exam every day makes one wear oneself out quickly. I am a very meticulous man. Even if they told me to sweep streets, I'd do that with a matching sense of responsibility.

The Ukr.: And your streets would be the cleanest in the city?

V.L.: Certainly. One must do every job thoroughly. Do you know the first entry in my labour-book? "Committee of State Security [i.e., KGB] of the Ukr. SSR. Employed as a janitor of a day-care centre." I worked as a janitor while at the history faculty of Kyiv University.

The Ukr.: But perhaps you ask yourself all those questions because you are at the head of the most "violent" parliament in the history of independent Ukraine? If the current Deputies were more peaceful, your job would be easier.

V.L.: Absolutely not. The speaker shoulders an immense responsibility in any kind of parliament. As for the current Deputies, you called them "violent" and I think it's very good. If they were "flat" and passive, there would be no leaders among them and no hope for a breakthrough. All it takes is knowing how to listen and to pick fresh ideas in any statement, however paradoxical. One must learn to respect someone else's opinion. Besides, I think that a grown-up, let alone a Deputy cannot be changed. Just imagine what all those majority elects had to go through to get into parliament! Some of them collected twenty, thirty, sometimes a hundred thousand votes. They have a right to have an individual opinion, because they were heard and understood by people. Some regard the current parliament as violent also because we grew up in a society where mediocrity and behavioural stereotypes were encouraged, where all were unanimous in a graveyard sort of way...

The Ukr.: You mean seizing the First National Channel, occupying the President's office should be considered normal?

V.L.: If you look up history, you will find that citizens could always bring a petition to any ruler. Another thing is whether that ruler would be willing to receive the petitioners, walk out on the porch or order people exiled. Representatives of the people cannot be shrugged off. Those Deputies came to the President to submit their documents. As for how they did it, it's a matter of morals and political culture.

The voice of the opposition must be heard; they enjoy quite some support in our society. Except that it wouldn't do to work up tensions. Everyone should sit down and talk things over. We must determine what the opposition is all about. I mean not those blocking parliamentary work but those coming out with alternative views. Acting under the law, they have a right and an opportunity to voice their stand to the wider society.

The Ukr.: It's good that the Verkhovna Rada has no graveyard unanimity, but the Deputies spend so much time sorting out their relationships instead of working. Without that "war of ambitions", what would the legislative have accomplished by now?

V.L.: They would've passed bills establishing the new rules of the game. The tax code everybody is shouting about is still shelved. You know why? Because no-one is interested. In fact, many would rather do without it; they're better off operating in the "shadow". The pension insurance bill was passed in the first reading, but that was as far as it got. Some political forces are fond of telling about how they sympathise with all those miserable pensioners, supplying them with some food on the Pensioners Day or in the course of an election campaign, to win their votes. An independent and adequately paid pensioner would cast his ballot for a politician not in return for a hot meal but because of what that politician is actually doing.

It is high time we had a law on book-publishing. If we relieve the publishers of the tax burden, publishing books will become an attractive business in Ukraine, we'll then challenge the Russian publishing companies.

The Ukr.: Indeed, but the opposition is too busy campaigning for early presidential elections to deal with book-publishing.

V.L.: Right, and not all Deputies do bother to consider what is happening to this country; they seem unaware of having started a fallacious practice; they just can't wait till the office of the head of state expires in due course. Great, we can go further according to this "fixed" logic. Let's then amend the Constitution, so the President will be elected for a term of one year and the Verkhovna Rada for six months... But to be serious, many of them realise that this country will have changed even more in a couple of years, so they try to make up lost ground. Others are driven by selfish interests; they want to get a cut of the privatisation pie.

The Ukr.: The journalist grapevine has it that the General Prosecutor's Office has again requested permission to prosecute Batkivshchyna's leader Yulia Tymoshenko.

V.L.: I have no such documents.

The Ukr.: And if you do?

V.L.: I'll find myself in a dual situation. Everybody must be equal before the law, but as Speaker I must protect every MP. It will be a difficult choice to make. The active part of the population is subject to the law; some receive their pay in envelopes slipped into their pockets, others watch to catch them in the process. Our laws are so complicated even professional lawyers find them hard to figure out. Everybody is worried about what will happen tomorrow. The Deputies are no exception. The situation with Yulia Tymoshenko is embarrassing for all members of parliament. Honestly, I don't know how they would vote.

The Ukr.: You mean you're also worried about what will happen to you tomorrow?

V.L.: No, my political future doesn't worry me one bit. So they remove me from the Speaker's seat, so what? I'll start writing a book on Ukrainian political history during the past decade. I think it will be a bestseller. I have a huge archive kept in boxes in the basement. I only hope the mice don't get there first. And I'm sure the book will be very interesting. Not so long ago, a team of authors - yours truly among them - published the two-volume collection "20th Century Ukraine." It has 2 volumes of 1,800 pages each and costs 810 hryvnias. And you know what? It's being sold.

The Ukr.: Your royalties shouldn't be bad, either.

V.L.: That's right. I earn good money, publishing books and preparing textbooks. A new textbook, "The History of Ukraine", came off the presses recently. University entrants will find it quite useful.

The Ukr.: Do you remember when you were a student?

V.L.: I certainly do. How could I ever forget? I was born to a peasant's family in Novohrad-Volynsky district of Zhytomyr oblast. There were four children. I was the second eldest . Our father worked as a cart-driver on a farm and wore gumboots all his life. Our mother was a member of a vegetable-growing team. She was often ill and we children always helped her. Marrows, squashes, tomatoes, cucumbers were all grown on the state farm. It was a shame for a villager whose section of the state farm field remained untended, so I would run to the field to help my mother after school. And every time I dreamed of winter - not because I would ski and skate, but because I wouldn't see that damn field. And I was an avid reader. Mother would blow out the candle, so I would sit close to the stove and continue reading by fire-light.

I dreamed of getting enrolled at Kyiv's naval political college [one of Soviet army institutions preparing commissars], but my nose was broken, so I wasn't eligible. I finished school with a gold medal and went to Kyiv to enter the university. I got off the bus at the station on Moscow Sq. and the best way was to flag down a cab, but I was afraid. Back in the village they had said I would be robbed if I did. So I walked all the way to the university's red building. Mother had given me a total of 15 roubles. I paid five roubles as bus fare and another five at the university hostel to get a bed, meaning I had ten roubles to live on. I managed. I would go to the canteen, take a lot of bread and just the second course. This would last me the day. And I was lucky. I passed the very first exam with an A and was enrolled.

The Ukr.: Aren't you sorry you had no luck with a military career?

V.L.: My brothers brought my dream to life. To them I was always as example. Mother would tell them "go and ask daddy number two". One of my brothers is a colonel general, Chairman of the Committee for Protection of the State Border. The youngest is a colonel, Commander of the 30th Armoured Division. I think if I had started on a military career I would be a general by now.

The Ukr.: Once upon a time they said "if you did not get married while attending an institute, you'd never marry.

V.L.: I met Tetiana, my future wife, when I was 24. I worked at the rector's office of Kyiv University and even had a 16 m2? bedsit. We met at a friend's birthday party. She was still at the Institute of Light Industry, majoring as a footwear factory economist. When she was expecting our first baby I helped her with her diploma paper.

The Ukr.: An historian and a footwear factory economist. A strange combination, isn't it?

V.L.: What about all those [party] congresses passing resolutions on the light industry? Someone had to take care of the theory and calculations. Tetiana calculated and I helped with the literature.

When our daughter was born, they held a family counsel - my wife and her parents - to decide on her name. Meanwhile, I took the papers and had a birth certificate written in the name of Olena Lytvyn. Yet I seldom call her Olena. She is "baby" to me. She is a student at the Kyiv National University, majoring in international law. I'm proud to say that she has been a straight "A" all these four years. And she finished school with a silver medal. Our son Ivan is 13, he is at school, of course. There was a time when he attended the Dynamo soccer school, but suddenly declared he didn't want to go there any more. I was very angry and demanded an explanation. He admitted that he wasn't doing well at all on the field but they had put him in a team anyway, just because of "his boss father". We don't know what he wants to be, but I know that he has character.

The Ukr.: What about your pastimes? Do you sing or play the guitar?