During Year of Culture in Ukraine, Kyiv court orders closing of youth librar (08/10/03)

During Year of Culture in Ukraine, Kyiv court orders closing of youth librar

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - With allegations of misuse of public office in the air, a Kyiv civil court on July 1 ordered the closing of a regional library in the capital in support of a claim by the city raion administration that it should be evicted for failing to pay rent in a timely manner.

The Kyiv Oblast Youth Library in the Pechersk raion is in a fight for its current premises with pressure coming from several top city officials for it to leave. The library's recently appointed director, Halyna Soroka - who took over after the previous director retired, citing the hopelessness of the situation - harshly criticized the court decision.

As Ms. Soroka explained in an interview with The Weekly, the problem is not delinquent lease payments, because everyone, including the raion leadership well understood that all oblast facilities depend on timely outlays from the state budget to pay their bills, which often does not occur.

Ms. Soroka implied that the real issue lies with Pechersk raion chairman, Anatolii Kovalenko, who had found a way to finally evict the library in order to privatize the building to further expand business interests he has in the area.

"We are aware from those who are close to our library that the head of the raion state leadership already has a beauty shop and a restaurant around here," she commented.

Ms. Soroka she said the library had felt the pressure to leave ever since the building the library occupied fell under the auspices of Pechersk Zhytlo (Pechersk Housing) in 2001, effectively giving the local raion control over it.

The eviction of the library - the only oblast library in the city geared to teenagers - comes at a most inopportune time because President Leonid Kuchma has declared 2003 the Year of Culture in Ukraine.

National Deputy Les Taniuk, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada's Committee on Culture and Spiritual Matters, criticized the court decision during an interview on July 14, while underscoring that it was in line with the policies of the current political leadership.

"I look at this as the norm for this government and this leadership, which also in this year of culture reduced the budget for culture," said Mr. Taniuk.

The lawmaker complained that there is a slew of unresolved cultural matters he would like to attend to given the supposed focus on culture in 2003, including funding for restoration of the Kozak military center, Khortytsia, the misappropriation of government funding for church parishes and the closing of the Les Kurbas Center in Kyiv.

"For the fourth month now I have not been given time to meet with [Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych]. I am the head of the parliamentary Committee on Culture and the prime minister has no time to discuss these matters with me," explained an exasperated Mr. Taniuk.

Ms. Soroka said she sees great irony in the timing of the order to close her library during the Year of Culture. She said she is determined to continue to fight to keep the library at its present location, where it has been since 1968. While noting that she had already filed an appeal with the civil court, she admitted that she faces an uphill battle as even the judge who presided over the original case suggested that she was in a no-win situation, since too many powerful local officials wanted to see the premises vacated.

"She said [the appeal] will not help because too many higher-ups were interested in the matter," explained Ms. Soroka.

In addition to the fight over rent problems, Ms. Soroka must prepare to do battle with a city administration that would like to see all oblast programs and facilities out of the city proper. She said she is well aware of the rift between Kyiv Mayor Oleksander Omelchenko and Kyiv Oblast Chairman Anatolii Zasykha over the matter. The Mayor's Office failed to reply to repeated requests from The Weekly for comment.

Ms. Soroka must deal also with an advisory note from Vice Prime Minister of Humanitarian Affairs Dmytro Tabachnyk to all Ukrainian libraries in which he has suggested that children's libraries and youth libraries, currently geared to different age groups, be combined as a cost-saving measure.

Despite the formidable obstacles before her, Ms. Soroka said she would go forward because she had sufficient support to proceed based on petitions from local residents and library visitors requesting that the library stay.

The fight she is preparing is based on factual inconsistencies in the arguments presented by the raion state administration during the court process. Ms. Soroka showed a letter submitted to the court by the raion administration showing that on December 3, 2002, it requested that the library decide and reply by January 31, 2003, whether it would continue its lease. Ms. Soroka said the library had never received such a letter and the only record of its existence is in the raion administration.

Yet, as Ms. Soroka explained, the letter's existence and its content are irrelevant to a large degree because the minutes of a meeting of the raion administration's committee on Non-Domestic Housing on December 5, 2002, showed that a decision to close the library was made that day - even though the raion letter gave the library until the end of January to reply.

The library director is also battling to have the Pechersk raion administration at least offer the library a substitute facility, which she said state law requires. She noted, however, that raion officials have explained to her that the law does not apply in this case because the raion was taking the building back after a lapse of the lease, in line with current legal procedures, and not simply to convert it to other use.

Kostiantyn Brychuk, the press secretary for Mr. Kovalenko, the head of the Pechersk Raion state administration, faxed The Weekly responses to questions submitted on the matter in which he explained that ever since the lease was signed between the library and Pechersk Zhytlo, the library often had failed to pay the monthly rent and had at times run up considerable debts. He also asserted that the library was falling into disuse and decline.

"Many reviews by officials of the raion state administration showed that the library was not purchasing new periodicals, that it was not organizing programs for youth and for the residents of the micro-raion and that the library was not being utilized," explained Mr. Brychuk.

Looking for support in her battle with the raion authorities, Ms. Soroka sent letters to National Deputy Taniuk, National Deputy Stanislav Stashevskyi, who represents the parliamentary district in which the library is located, Mayor Omelchenko, Vice Prime Minister Tabachnyk, Minister of Culture Oleksander Bohutskyi, and Oleksander Afonin, director of the Ukrainian Publishers and Booksellers Association.

The only support she received in her quest for justice was in a letter from Mr. Taniuk to Mr. Omelchenko requesting an explanation of the problem and resolution of the situation in the library's favor, and a letter by Mr. Afonin to President Kuchma regarding the ironic displacement of the library during the Year of Culture.

Mr. Afonin received a reply to his correspondence, but not from a presidential administration representative. It was the Pechersk Raion deputy chairman, who called to ask what possible interest could the head of a publishing and bookselling association have in a library problem.

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