An open letter to the international community (11/06/05)

An open letter to the international community

Following is the text of an open letter to the international community from the Committee for the Protection of the Archives of Ukraine. (The text was translated from the original Ukrainian by Oksana Zakydalsky.)

Dear friends and colleagues:

We, scholars, community and cultural activists of Ukraine who have formed the Committee for the Protection of the Archives of Ukraine, express our deep concern with regard to the preservation of unique documents in the Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv (henceforth Lviv Archives), which come under the State Committee of the Archives of Ukraine. We declare that the archives are not fulfilling their essential function - the proper preservation of documents.

Recently, the mass media has been exposing scandalous facts about the disappearance of a large number of documents (about 500 items) from archival collections. For some time, the directors of the Lviv Archives and the State Committee were silent about the thefts and then did everything to hide their true measure. We are also troubled by the fact that, from the beginning of 2005, hundreds of scholars in Ukraine and from other countries, cannot conduct archival research because the archives are inaccessible to them, there is a lack of information about the stolen documents, and a whole group of priceless archival collections are in disorder.

In spite of the wide publicity, the public still has not found out the reasons for and the real scale of this catastrophe for the humanities. As well, the results of the investigation of the state of the collections that was conducted at the Lviv Archives in the last months remain unknown. Although at the beginning of the investigation only an insignificant number of documents were found and returned, the investigative organs are now inactive and reluctant to pursue an objective and impartial investigation. To date, lists of the stolen documents have not been passed on to Interpol, a necessary step to prevent them from being sold abroad.

At the same time, we see attempts to turn this matter into a personal conflict and deflect public attention from a genuine investigation of the thefts. Pressure is being put on the staff at the Lviv Archives, and the security forces are looking for a scapegoat instead of finding the real perpetrators and organizers of the crime. Most upsetting is the fact that the director of the Lviv Archives has not been relieved of her position during the investigation, although she is legally responsible for the preservation of the collections entrusted to her, as well as for everything that is tied to the functioning of the archives. After all, she is an interested party in this criminal matter, and the person who is putting pressure on the staff and blocking the investigation.

The Committee for the Preservation of the Archives of Ukraine is not prepared to accept this state of affairs and calls upon the international scholarly community not to stand on the sidelines but to ally itself with us and react to the theft of the historical heritage not only of Ukrainians but also of the Polish, German, Jewish and Armenian nations that lived on these territories and whose documents are found in the archives. It seems that the leaders of our country lack the political will to resolve this matter.

We appeal to you to support the Committee for the Protection of the Archives of Ukraine in our demand for an objective investigation of the thefts at the Lviv Archives, an explanation of the reasons and consequences of these unprecedented losses and the use of all possible measures (including working through international organizations) to recover the lost documents. Your expressions of solidarity are important for us.

Please direct your letters to the e-mail addresses of President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko; prime minister of Ukraine Yurii Yekhanurov; vice Prime Minister for Humanitarian and Social Issues Viacheslav Kyrylenko; Minister of Internal Affairs Yurii Lutsenko; the head of the Security Service of Ukraine, as well as to the address of the Committee for the Protection of the Archives of Ukraine: [email protected].

Signed by the Presidium of the Committee for the Protection of the Archives of Ukraine which includes Mykola Bevz, chair of the Faculty of Architecture, Lviv Polytechnic; Borys Vozhnytskyi, president, Ukrainian National Committee of the International Council of Museums; Yaroslav Dashkevych, chair, Faculty of Eastern Studies, Lviv University; poets Ihor and Iryna Kalynets; and members of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences Yakym Zapasko, Mykola Ilnytskyi, Yaroslav Isaievych, Oleh Romaniv and others.

| Home Page |