Ukraine without Kuchma
Lutsenko gained public fame as one of the leaders of the Ukraine without Kuchma! campaign, which followed the Cassette Scandal of 2000. He was also one of the "faces of the Orange revolution". From 1991, Lutsenko was a long-term member of the Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU); prior to his appointment to the executive branch, he was people's deputy in the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) beginning in February 2002. Lutsenko belonged to the a pro-European faction akin to social democratic parties in the rest of Europe, rather than a post-Soviet conservative socialism.