1935–1998
Vadym Hetman
Financier, head of the central bank 1992
Look at the first paper hryvnias and you’ll find Vadym Hetman’s signature. He ran the National Bank for only nine months, yet he laid the foundations of independent Ukraine’s banking system. In 1998 he was killed by a hired gunman. Hero of Ukraine (posthumously).
Key accomplishments
- Chairman of the Board of the National Bank of Ukraine (March–December 1992)
- Involved in introducing the hryvnia, Ukraine’s currency: his signature is on its first paper notes
- Co-author of the laws On the Economic Independence of the Ukrainian SSR (1990) and On Banks and Banking (1991)
- Chairman of the Exchange Committee of the Ukrainian Interbank Currency Exchange
- Member of parliament 1990–1998; took part in adopting the Constitution of Ukraine in 1996
- Hero of Ukraine (2005, posthumously)
Whose signature is on the first hryvnias?
Pick up one of the first paper hryvnia notes and you’ll see Vadym Hetman’s signature. He chaired the National Bank of Ukraine only from March to December 1992, but his name is linked with the making of the country’s own currency, with Ukraine joining the IMF, the World Bank and the EBRD, and with the founding of the Ukrainian Interbank Currency Exchange.
A banker from a Poltava village
Hetman was born in 1935 in the village of Snityn in the Poltava region, into a family of village teachers. He graduated from the Kyiv Institute of Finance and Economics and spent almost 20 years in banking and finance in the Zaporizhzhia region. Later he was first deputy head of the State Price Committee of the Ukrainian SSR, and in 1987 he took over the bank that in 1990 became the joint-stock bank Ukraina.
Laws for a new state
In 1990 Hetman was elected to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament. He co-wrote the laws On the Economic Independence of the Ukrainian SSR and On Banks and Banking. In December 1992 he left the National Bank because he disagreed with the official line on the terms of leaving the “rouble zone”. In 1994 he was elected to parliament a second time and took part in adopting the 1996 Constitution.
On 22 April 1998 Vadym Hetman was shot dead by a hired killer in the entrance of the Kyiv apartment building where he lived. In 2003 the Luhansk Regional Court of Appeal sentenced the killers to life; the verdict did not name who ordered the murder. The prosecution named former prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko as the organizer; Lazarenko denies any involvement and calls the case fabricated. In 2005 Hetman was posthumously made a Hero of Ukraine.
Why it matters today
Hetman was one of the builders of independent Ukraine’s monetary system: the National Bank, its own currency and an interbank exchange. The Kyiv National Economic University and a street in Kyiv bear his name.
