Zvarych sees campaign to force his resignation, suspects diaspora, others (05/15/05)

Zvarych sees campaign to force his resignation, suspects diaspora, others

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - After years of embellishing his educational and professional experience, Ukraine's Justice Minister Roman Zvarych admitted to the Ukrainian people at a May 10 press conference what he had told The Ukrainian Weekly in an exclusive interview two weeks ago.

Before 40 reporters and at least a dozen television cameras, Mr. Zvarych admitted to having completed no diploma other than a bachelor's degree from Manhattan College, despite claiming for eight years to have earned a master's degree in philosophy from Columbia University.

"I don't have a master's degree diploma from Columbia University," Mr. Zvarych said. "Instead, I have a degree that is the equivalent of a master's degree from Columbia or any other academic institution. Without such a degree of academic learning, I would not have had the opportunity to be a teacher at New York University."

Despite the admission, Mr. Zvarych maneuvered through his second scandal in three months and clearly has the backing of President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who deliberately avoided comment on his background.

Mr. Zvarych said he suspects an organized campaign is under way to possibly force his resignation. He blamed allegedly warring nationalist factions in the Ukrainian diaspora and even members of the Komsomol, or Communist Youth League.

Mr. Zvarych, 51, is a native of Yonkers, N.Y., who settled in Ukraine and became the first American to acquire Ukrainian citizenship in January 1995. He was elected as a National Deputy to Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada on March 29, 1998.

After being appointed as Ukraine's Justice Minister on February 5, he became enmeshed in the Yushchenko government's first scandal when he threatened to resign, and then backed off, following a government decision to ban the re-export of oil, a business his wife Svitlana is involved in. The ban was never implemented.

During his May 10 press conference, journalists engaged in the political theater led by Mr. Zvarych, in which he made certain admissions, denied prior statements and tiptoed around past untruths.

He stressed those qualifications that are real and qualify him for the position of justice minister, and then ultimately left the stage amidst a cloud of contradiction and confusion, without directly admitting to any particular lie.

Mr. Zvarych also insisted that all the biographical information he submitted to publisher Kyiv Informatsia Servis (KIS), which annually releases its Who's Who in Ukraine volumes, was accurate, "except for a few mistakes."

When citing a degree he said was equivalent to a master's, Mr. Zvarych did not elaborate on what it might be, but said he had brought back certificates verifying that he had studied at Columbia University.

Mr. Zvarych said he obtained documents from Columbia University, New York University and Manhattan College during a three-day trip to New York City last week. However, he did not share these with the press. He said he gave copies of the documents to the Cabinet of Ministers.

Journalists never doubted that Mr. Zvarych had studied at Columbia University, and The Ukrainian Weekly has previously reported that Mr. Zvarych attended Columbia University between the fall of 1976 and the spring of 1978.

The Weekly also confirmed that Mr. Zvarych earned a bachelor's degree from Manhattan College in 1976.

The enterprising Ukrainian Internet news site Ukrayinska Pravda broke the scandal on April 14, when it first reported that Mr. Zvarych had lied on his official biography posted on the Cabinet of Ministers website.

As it turns out, the Ukrainian government pays KIS for biographical information posted on its websites, and included in its Intranet system to which Cabinet of Ministers and Verkhovna Rada employees have access to, said Yurii Marchenko, the director of KIS.

KIS received its biographical information directly from Mr. Zvarych, who completed three Who's Who profile forms and signed one of them, he said.

Mr. Zvarych completed and submitted three biographical forms for Who's Who: the first in 1994, the second form sometime between October 1997 and February 1998 and the third form in June 2003.

The Weekly obtained and reviewed all three copies.

Ever since the 1998 edition of Who's Who, Mr. Zvarych has claimed to have a master's degree in philosophy from Columbia University. In a campaign flier printed in 1995 or 1996, Mr. Zvarych claimed that he "graduated ('zakinchyv') Columbia University."

Since the 1995 Who's Who edition, Mr. Zvarych has also been claiming that he wrote a candidate's dissertation on Plato. In both Europe and North America, a candidate's dissertation would imply that Mr. Zvarych had already achieved a master's degree and entered a doctoral program.

In an April 28 interview with The Weekly, Mr. Zvarych said that this work was not a dissertation, but a "preparatory work" on the subject of not only the ontological, but also the epistemological bases of Platonic ethics. "This was a work that was supposed to become the basis of a doctor's thesis," Mr. Zvarych said.

In his Who's Who entries since 1998, Mr. Zvarych has also claimed he was an assistant professor at Columbia University between 1981 and 1983. An assistant professorship is a tenure-track position that requires completion of a doctorate diploma.

The same claim was made until late April on the official website of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, where it was written: "In 1891 [sic] graduated form [sic] Columbia University (New York), philosophy faculty. Ph.D. thesis 'Ontological bases of Plato ethics' (1981). 1981-1983 - Assistant Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University. 1983 to 1991 - Professor in New York University." Recently, however, all information related to Mr. Zvarych's education and academic career has been deleted from the site.

Mr. Zvarych backed off his claims about being a professor in his interview with The Weekly: "I didn't have a title. I was an assistant. I had the possibility for seven or eight years of delivering lectures. This wasn't paid work. This was simply scholarly satisfaction that I gained for the scholarly preparation at Columbia University for my goal, which was the doctorate."

At the press conference, Mr. Zvarych asserted that he never laid claim to the "academic rank" of professor, when the Who's Who biographies he authored and approved since 1998 state that he had been an NYU professor between 1983 and 1991, or eight years.

Instead, Mr. Zvarych said he had the right to use the title of "professor," which is how his colleagues and students referred to him.

Mr. Zvarych referred to himself as a "vykladach" throughout the press conference, which may be translated into English as a teacher or lecturer.

Mr. Zvarych was a part-time lecturer at NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies between 1989 and 1991, according to Josh Taylor, an NYU spokesman.

When asked whether he had signed his Who's Who profile forms, Mr. Zvarych acknowledge that he did, though they contained mistakes and some parts of the forms were not in his handwriting.

When similarly confronted about his Who's Who forms on Channel 5 television on May 10, Mr. Zvarych acknowledged that his 2003 form bore his signature, but claimed that someone had included false information after he signed the document.

This remark drew a sharp response from the Who's Who editors, who staunchly defended the reliability of their publications. "The utmost proper treatment of sources has insured our work since 1991, the beginning of work on our reference book," read a statement released by KIS.

Editors change biographies only when adding information from official sources such as campaign fliers or government sources, Mr. Marchenko told The Weekly, but they never subtract or change information.

Instead of acknowledging his deceit, Mr. Zvarych blamed what he described as warring factions in the Ukrainian diaspora for his most recent scandal, leaving many Ukrainian journalists scratching their heads in skepticism.

"I found out the origin and instruments of this action: beginning with the improper spelling of my last name and ending with the blatant lie," Mr. Zvarych wrote in a Ukrainian-language statement distributed at the event.

"Involved and manipulated were old diaspora ideological wars and scores between Banderites, Melnyktivsti and Dviykari. I understand the representatives of these 'patriotic' circles - Ukraine is independent. There's no one to fight against. All that's left is to fight against each other. To me, it's an empty matter. I have more important work to do."

Dr. Taras Kuzio, a visiting professor at the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, said Mr. Zvarych's Dviykari comment is likely a veiled reference to him.

Dr. Kuzio worked for the Prolog Research Corp., which publishes Suchasnist, a literary journal associated with the Dviykari, an ideological spin-off from the Ukrainian nationalist movement. However, Dr. Kuzio said he himself was never a Dviykar.

Dr. Kuzio has been critical of Mr. Zvarych's conduct. On April 29, Ukrayinska Pravda ran an opinion piece written by Dr. Kuzio in which he states that the Zvarych scandal has already cast a negative image of Ukraine internationally.

Mr. Zvarych's claim to have a degree equal to that of a master's is an insult to anyone who's actually invested time and money into completing an actual master's degree, Dr. Kuzio commented.

"Instead of accepting guilt, he's done the same thing the Kuchmites have done and claim there's a conspiracy against him," Dr. Kuzio told The Weekly. "That is not a good sign for the new government. It's the same tactics as in the Kuchma era."

When asked whether he had discussed the possibility of resignation with Mr. Yushchenko, Mr. Zvarych said he is prepared to do so if either the president or Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko determine that he is unqualified to serve. He cast himself as a loyal servant of the Orange Revolution.

"If you believe that Roman Zvarych is fighting to stay in power, then believe me it's far from that," Mr. Zvarych said. "I am simply following orders from the president of Ukraine. If the president of Ukraine ordered me to be a policeman in a certain district, then I would do that."

The day after Mr. Zvarych's press conference, Ms. Tymoshenko said that Mr. Zvarych "gave absolutely exhaustive answers to all questions."

President Yushchenko's office, when contacted by The Weekly on May 11 and 12, declined to comment on the matter.

Ukraine's political experts were divided as to whether they believed Mr. Zvarych should resign.

Those recommending that he resign said he should do so because of the damage he's done to the new leadership's image. Resigning would spare any further discreditation or distrust, they said.

While Mr. Zvarych is from the West, where he would have to resign after "being pinned against a wall," he's in a different world where the rules of fair play have yet to evolve, said Mykhailo Pohrebynskyi, the director of the Kyiv Center for Political Research and Conflict Studies.

"The fact that he will stay in his position, and that he will possibly remain after this accusation reveals that we are still far from those norms that the new government is calling for," Mr. Pohrebynskyi said. "(The government) is not new, but just a particular reincarnation of the old government with the old rules of life."

Reporters also questioned whether Mr. Zvarych thought he was qualified to lead Ukraine's Justice Ministry, given that he has no formal legal education and now that it is apparent he has completed only a bachelor's degree.

In his defense, Mr. Zvarych pointed out that he never claimed to have a formal legal education, a fact that Mr. Yushchenko was well aware of when appointing him as justice minister.

Mr. Zvarych stressed that he had gained adequate knowledge of Ukrainian jurisprudence not only during his service as a national deputy in Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada for six years, but also in acting as a lawyer who won cases in court.

He referred to a court case that he spoke and won during the Orange Revolution on behalf of President Yushchenko in which he argued against the creation of 460 voting districts in the Russian Federation.

He also cited a court case in which he helped defend a large family with many children from eviction.

Ukraine has no equivalent of a bar association, and there are no necessary exams or licenses in order to practice law.

In his April 28 interview with The Weekly, Mr. Zvarych stressed other valuable experience in developing Ukrainian jurisprudence, including his service on the Verkhovna Rada's Committee on Legal Reform, a temporary parliamentary subcommittee that developed on Ukraine's Civil Code and his tenure as vice-chairman of the Rada's Committee on European Integration.

"All bills that were to be considered by the Verkhovna Rada were supposed to have gone through this committee, which would issue a conclusion as to its conformity to European norms," Mr. Zvarych said. "To this day, I can say with full responsibility that I consider myself an expert of European law."

During his press conference, Mr. Zvarych also claimed, that when arriving in Ukraine in 1991 he had the intention of leading an academic career, but then was "dragged into politics." He said he never fought to attain political power.

"When I was 15 years old, I took an oath, which came down to one thing: 'You will achieve Ukrainian statehood or you will die fighting for it,' " Mr. Zvarych said. "I've lived my whole life according to this principle. Never in my worst dreams would I have imagined that, once I finally achieved my goal and had the ability to work on behalf of my nation and for the betterment of national interests, which I could only dream of in the diaspora, that all this would come back against me."

Mr. Zvarych said that every revolution in history required a sacrifice, and it was possible that he would fill that role for the Orange Revolution.

He said that no one can take away what he has: "What do I have? First of all, my conscience."

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