Slauta was born on 2 January 1952 in the village of Zakitne (
Lyman Raion, which was then part of the
Ukrainian SSR in the
Soviet Union. In 1973, he graduated from
V. Dokuchaev Kharkiv National Agrarian University with a degree in agronomy. Afterwords, he worked in a variety of
collective farms, until eventually becoming Second Secretary and later Chairman of the Krasnolymansk City Committee. He briefly returned to agriculture in the mid-1990s following the
collapse of the Soviet Union, becoming general director of "Elevatorzernoprom" and director of the Donetsk office of "Bread of Ukraine". == Political career ==