Recently Viktor Yanukovych entrusted Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and Head of the Security Service of Ukraine Valerii Khoroshkovsky with taking measures by mid-October for bringing the National Memorial Museum of the Victims of Occupation Regimes “Lontsky Street Prison” under jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine and providing proper budgetary funding for the abovementioned museum. This has been reported by the press service for the head of state.
It will be reminded that the memorial-museum “Lontsky Street Prison” is a former Lviv prison, which was used as a political prison by the Polish, Soviet, and Nazi authorities. In 2009 it became the first prison-museum in Ukraine called “The National Memorial Museum of the Victims of the Occupation Regimes ‘Lontsky Street Prison.’”
Ruslan ZABILY, head of the Lontsky Street Prison Museum:
“I said back last year that it would be reasonable to bring our establishment under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. You must remember that there have been several attempts to bring the museum under the aegis of the Institute of National Memory, but the Institute of National Memory has no such functions as yet. Therefore, as the president’s website says, bringing our museum to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine in an established order is quite a normal process. Quite a different thing is how it will be carried out, how the process of transferring will be realized, what the funding will be. Currently the museum is a legal personality, leasing premises from the Security Service of Ukraine. The SBU pays for the public utilities and gives money to pay wages for the employees. Once we will be brought under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture we will be able to fully realize ourselves in the work we are doing owing to the immense support of the public. We are working without any troubles at the moment, but hopefully under the new jurisdiction we will have even more opportunities.”
Iryna KALYNETS, public activist, prisoner of Brezhnev’s camps:
“I think this decision of the president makes sense, it is well-reasoned and well-thought. The museum, which is responsible for the destinies of people of various nationalities – the workers of culture, art, religion, science, peasants and workers – who were destroyed by the Nazi and Soviet regimes (and those are hundreds of not only names that we know but all those who lived on our territory), should be brought namely under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture.”
