The Day has repeatedly reported that the Kyiv authorities are trying to evict Ukrainian book stores and publishing houses from their premises. Unfortunately, not only has the problem not been resolved, it is being further aggravated: the conflict between the Kyiv City Administration and book publishers has now shifted to the courts. But Themis, the embodiment of divine order, law, and custom, did not turn out to be quite so impartial and tipped the scales in favor of those with power and money.
“The Mystetstvo, Oberehy, Alaton, and Vrozhai publishing houses, the state-run publishing house Ukrainska entsyklopediia, the chief editorial office of the Ukrainian book Pamiat, the children’s journal Soniashnyk, the literary journal Raiduha, and the bookstores Abzats, Znannia, and Siaivo form the list of organizations whose evictions were recently upheld by the courts. The rulings were handed down on the grounds that the Kyiv authorities are allegedly fulfilling the will of the people and managing public property in a way that best suits Kyiv residents,” said Oleksandr Afonin, president of the Ukrainian Association of Book Publishers and Sellers.
Seeking justice, Ukrainian book publishers set up the Civic Defense Committee and held their first protest action on St. Michael’s Square, next to the statue of Princess Olha.
“We want to raise the awareness of Kyivites because it is no longer possible to appeal to the conscience of bureaucrats: the lust for personal gain has deranged their minds, and they have encroached on the holy of holies - the spirituality and culture of the Ukrainian people,” said Yevhen Karas, the head of the Association of Modern Artists of Ukraine. “We also want to ask the people of Kyiv if they would like the city authorities to destroy all the publishers of children’s books, textbooks, and popular science books, if they would like Khreshchatyk not to have a single bookstore but lots of boutiques that sell rags from all over Europe, if they want to have special permission to go to Andriivsky Uzviz, because that’s where all the ‘cool’ offices of Ukraine’s richest people will be.”
The Kyiv authorities are using all kinds of ways to grab the precious square meters that bookstores and publishing houses are still holding onto.
“They are going to raise our rent by 260 times, in spite of the fact that the bookstore signed a rental agreement with the previous city administration until 2010, and nobody is authorized to cancel it,” says Alla Lazutkina, director of the Siaivo bookstore. “The rent increase question came up one year ago. That’s how they are trying to make the bookstore go bankrupt and seize the premises. The city bureaucrats even ignore the fact that in 2006 Siaivo paid 380,000 hryvnias in taxes (not a single Khreshchatyk boutique has ever paid so much). Of course, the appetites of the fat cats are easy to explain: the market value of the shop’s 370 square meters is 7 million.”
The situation with the Znannia bookstore is a little different, but in the long run everything boils down to square meters in the very heart of Khreshchatyk.
“The bookstore’s employees once tried to privatize it in order to preserve its present character, but the authorities turned down the application for no reason,” Afonin says. “Then the employees successfully sued the city administration, but the latter appealed the ruling. The Supreme Court of Ukraine put an end to this affair by declaring that City Hall’s actions were unlawful. But the city administration has been refusing to obey this ruling for almost three years: the new authorities do not need the Znannia bookstore on Khreshchatyk; what they need is an area that costs a bundle.
So City Hall decided to announce a competition, so the premises will go to the highest bidder. This is in fact an eviction notice.”
“Unfortunately, all our appeals to the president and the prime minister of Ukraine, the mayor of Kyiv, district chiefs, and political forces have been ignored. Book publishers have been harassed for a year, but no politician has lifted a finger to protect Ukrainian culture,” Karas says.
Civic Defense Committee activists are not counting on any help from the powers-that-be, and they are hoping that other regions of Ukraine will support their undertaking.
“We want Lviv, Donetsk, Kharkiv, and other cities to support Kyiv today, and the people of Kyiv will help them if necessary. Only then will we be able to say that we are one nation and that ordinary people are the true masters of their own country,” the chairman of the Association of Modern Artists emphasized.
Karas cited the case when the US Congress was going to pass a legislative amendment that would curtail the rights of libraries. About 15,000 Americans responded to the call issued by the Association of American Libraries and came to Washington at their own expense to say a resolute “No” to the authorities. The legislators had to heed the people’s message. Incidentally, the central public library in Chicago receives $90 million for its needs from the city coffers, and its total budget runs to $100 million.
“All our libraries put together don’t even have half of this budget,” Karas concluded. His statement is a scathing indictment of the state’s attitude to Ukrainian culture.
