Thefts from historical archives in Lviv raise troubling questions (11/06/05)

Thefts from historical archives in Lviv raise troubling questions

by Oksana Zakydalsky

TORONTO - On July 16, 2004, then Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych made a pre-election gift "to the Ukrainian nation" donating to the Ukrainian Historical Museum in Kyiv 42 of Mykhailo Hrushevsky's letters, written in 1904-1911. Vice Prime Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk explained that Mr. Yanukovych had bought the letters from private collectors during his visits to the United States and France.

The letters were immediately identified as documents that had been stolen from the Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv. When this was brought to the attention of the head of the State Committee on Archives in Kyiv, Hennadii Boriak, the "donated" documents were quietly returned to Lviv.

In the last 65 years, all libraries and archives in Ukraine suffered irreplaceable losses. With the Soviet occupation of western Ukraine in 1939, a clean-up of the collections on ideological grounds was begun. In the years 1941-1944 the occupying Germans packed manuscripts, parchments, maps, atlases and other rare publications into trunks for shipment to Germany. Many of the shipments were sent via Poland, where hiding places in monasteries and castles were set up for the plundered treasures. After the Germans left, unique monastery book collections, Moldovian incunabula and Armenian manuscripts from Lviv appeared in Kracow, Warsaw and Wroclaw.

After the war, the libraries, archives and museums of Ukraine were purged on ideological grounds by the Soviet regime and damaged by arson, flooding and theft. However, special search expeditions from the USSR were sent to Czechoslovakia and Poland, and many library, archival and art rarities were returned to Lviv. Wanting to make a friendly gesture toward the new Communist government in Warsaw, the Soviet regime also shipped out documents and publications to Poland. But, thanks to the involvement of Lviv professionals, some of whom did not want to pass over the Lviv treasures to the Poles, a lot was saved.

Poland did not cease its claims to the book collections and archives that remained in Lviv, and even as late as 1987 publications from the Lviv collections were being transferred to Poland. But, writes historian Yaroslav Fedoruk in "Dzerkalo Tyzhnia," in spite of the devastation they have suffered "the archival and publications collections of Lviv are some of the richest in Ukraine."

The Yanukovych "gift" brought to light the fact that massive thefts were taking place in the Lviv Archives. Although a theft of over 100 documents relating to the Polish aristocracy had been discovered in 1994, it was immediately reported to the militia. Within a month the culprits were caught and sentenced to terms of between three and eight years and 90 percent of the documents were returned.

However, the recent thefts have not resulted in such a quick response, although experience has shown that investigations are effective when they come "hot on the trail of the incidents." Even before the Yanukovych letters affair, the archives security personnel were warning the management that thefts were taking place.

The warnings were ignored although documents from the Lviv Archives were surfacing on the black market in Kyiv: letters of Mykhailo Drahomanov, Panteleimon Kulish and Mykola Lysenko, documents of Andriy Sheptytsky and collections of photographs.

In Gdansk, Polish police found colored copies of documents that were to be auctioned off - 66 documents from the 16th to the 18th centuries from the Lviv Archives (many of them royal certificates on parchment). Criminal charges were brought against the alleged owner, a private citizen, but the case was closed as the actual documents could not be found. The issue was brought to the attention of the Embassy of Ukraine in Poland.

In the summer of 2004, according to researchers of Jewish records, documents relating to the history of Jewish religious groups in Lviv were being offered for sale. An interesting fact is that one of the visitors to the archives in May 2004 was Mark Schrayberman, a person who had once worked there and now works in Israel at Yad Vashem and who has been implicated in the theft of the frescoes of Bruno Shulz from Drohobych, which later surfaced in Israel (Postup, May 24, 2004).

Information about the latest round of thefts first appeared in the press, in Lvivska Hazeta on September 30, 2004, but the director of the Lviv Archives, Diana Pelz, denied such thefts had taken place. On December 21, 2004 Director Pelz was given an award by President Leonid Kuchma for her efforts on behalf of "the protection and popularization of the national historical-cultural heritage." The head of the State Committee on Archives in Kyiv, Mr. Boriak, supported Ms. Pelz in belittling the issue of the thefts.

In March 2005, the problem of the thefts was raised in a national deputy's question in the Verkhovna Rada and in April the first article about the thefts appeared in the Kyiv press (Ukraina Moloda). In the same month a roundtable on the problem and consequences of the document theft was held in Lviv with over 130 participants. The roundtable resulted in an open letter to relevant ministers of the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko government.

In June, Lviv Oblast deputies made a request to the president and prime minister to relieve the director of her responsibilities while the investigation was on going.

Open letters and questions to legislators, press conferences and Internet teleconferences continue and the issue continues to occupy the front pages of newspapers.

There is no doubt that the theft, sale and resale of documents on such a large scale could have occurred only if it were well-organized - from workers in the archives who could be the actual thieves to authorities in Kyiv who cover for them and for the sellers.

But the authorities in charge continue to stonewall. The investigation has come to a dead end, while the director of the Lviv Archives continues to deny that anything important has happened. In her latest interview (Postup, October 22) Ms. Pelz says there is a press campaign aimed at discrediting her although "everything is fine - every audit since 1999, during my tenure, has shown that everything is fine."

Both she and Mr. Boriak have focused on blaming primarily two workers at the archives - archivist Ivan Svernyk and his sister Halyna Svernyk, who heads the department of information and publications, both of whom have been dismissed from their duties. They were the persons who first brought the matter to public attention.

"Such a state of affairs would not be out of place if the date on the calendar was 1937 or even October 2004, but the fact that this is happening in post-Orange Ukraine provokes deep indignation," commented former dissident and political prisoner Iryna Kalynets of Lviv.

A Committee for the Defense of the Archives of Ukraine has been formed composed of scholars such as head of the faculty of architecture at Lviv Polytechnic, Mykola Bevz; art historian Borys Voznytsky; historian Yaroslav Dashkevych; academician Yaroslav Isaievych, and many others. The committee is pressing for accountability and action. It has recently published an open letter to the international community. (See sidebar below).

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