Leonid Chernovetsky: how Lenya Cosmos robbed Kyiv and moved to Georgia

Ukrainians traditionally have even more bad luck with mayors than with presidents. Some of them are depriving people of business and jobs, calling for them to “get ready for the land,” while others are turning their city into a garbage dump. But the most extravagant Ukrainian mayor was, undoubtedly, Leonid Chernovetsky. A businessman, a pastor and an eccentric all rolled into one, surrounded by an entire army of Kyiv grandmothers who idolized him – whom he shamelessly deceived and cynically used.

The Ballad of a Buried Grandfather

Mikhail Ilyich Chernovetsky with his first wife Evdokia

Chernovetsky Leonid Mikhailovich was born on December 25, 1951 in Kharkov, into a family of a typical Soviet “middle class”. His mother Praskovya Gavrilovna Goncharova (1914-2007) worked as a rural school teacher before the war, and then graduated from law school and made a career as a lawyer in criminal and civil cases. There were rumors that Praskovya Gavrilovna had children before Leonid (two daughters and a son), who died during the harsh war years, but they were not confirmed by anything. But it is a fact that the war crippled the fate and health of his father, career officer Mikhail Ilyich Chernovetsky. He returned from the war as an invalid, first married the widow Evdokia Nazarchuk, then divorced, and in 1949 he married Praskovya Goncharova – but only lived with her for four years. With the divorce, he stopped even visiting his son, and Leonid actually doesn’t remember his father, although he took his last name. But he was raised by his stepfather: actor and director of the Kharkov Russian Drama Theater Yakov Grigorievich Azimov, whom Praskovya Gavrilovna married in the late 50s, and lived with his last name for the next half century.

Yakov Grigorievich Azimov

However, it was impossible to raise Leonid. He enthusiastically became interested in his stepfather’s acting skills, learned to convincingly play roles and act, but the art itself had little interest in him: the little tomboy saw in it only a method of achieving his goals. He began to play roles in life: a principled and open boy in front of the teachers of Kharkov secondary school No. 36, a resourceful ringleader in front of his classmates and street hooligans, a loving, obedient son in front of his mother. Subsequently, his whole life will become one big theater! Hence such conflicting memories of Lenya’s childhood, and such an ambiguous assessment of Leonid Chernovetsky’s activities as a businessman, politician and mayor.

According to childhood comrades, young Chernovetsky at first often played pranks, then began to make friends with punks, participate in their teenage drinking bouts and petty thefts, and even “sixed” with some petty criminal authority. At the same time, teachers spoke of him as an uncontrollable, but smart and well-studied boy. However, after the 8th grade he had to leave his school, while Chernovetsky was not accepted into either a technical school or even a vocational school, and his mother got him a job as a mechanic apprentice at the Kharkov aircraft plant. He received his secondary education, according to some sources, at the evening “working” school No. 3, according to others, at the very prestigious secondary school No. 4.

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