Siaivo comes back home

The one and a half years of Siayvo’s homelessness have finally come to the end. The Kyiv Economic Court recently restituted its premises to municipal ownership. Siayvo’s premises had been sold to the Abril-Studio company in September 2009 for 300,000 dollars. The sale violated the decrees, laws and resolutions of the Supreme Council which were adopted to support the Ukrainian book publishing and book distribution industries. Therefore, the store’s return to its old home is a real precedent in the history of illegal raider takeovers of bookstores, publishing houses, galleries and other cultural institutions, which take place in the capital from time to time.

Siaivo’s defenders believe their fight was aided by changes in the leadership of the Kyiv City State Administration, after people who had been somehow involved in the illegal sale of the bookstore were removed from power. The court was also influenced by the steadfastness of the store’s employees and community members, who stubbornly defended Siaivo for 15 months. The last rally to protect the bookstore was held by activists in February this year.

“We presented indisputable documentary confirmations for the legitimacy of our position that Siaivo, in fact, operated as a bookstore for its entire 65-year history, was a problem-free enterprise, played an important role in the literary community, and paid its taxes regularly, while Suprunenko, Komarnytsky, Bass and the rest of Chernovetsky’s ‘valiant knights’ had seized it in an illegal raid,” says PR manager of the store Yulia Valova, who worked there for many years as a volunteer, organizing book presentations. “Lots of arguments plus public support, appeals to the president, and 450 letters to all the MPs made our victory possible. The new team in the Kyiv City State Administration also contributed to it: our store’s director Alla Lazutkina was invited to a meeting with Oleksandr Popov’s deputy [Oleksandr Puzanov – Ed.], who promised to investigate the conflict and, should we happen to be on the right side, to support and help us.”

However, Siaivo’s woes are not over yet. To resume operations, management must clean up and re-equip the premises themselves, as the violent takeover left the store completely without bookstands, shelves, furniture items and even documents. According to Valova, the store now has neither documents to confirm its business activities, nor agreements with the publishers, nor a list of books that were on sale at the time of the takeover. And the books themselves are long gone, too. “The raiders carried them out and were not ashamed to resell them. We have even receipts to confirm that Siaivo’s books were sold at other stores and on the Petrivka open market,” adds Valova.

Siaivo’s defenders are yet to go through seven lawsuits, after which they hope to get monetary compensation for the damages caused by the raiders. They plan to reactivate the store before the year’s end. Hopefully, they will manage to meet this deadline, although there is much work to be done, and they will have to start virtually from scratch. But the important thing is that at least one cultural center of Kyiv has been returned to the capital’s residents.

COMMENTARY

Oleksandr Puzanov, Deputy Head of the Kyiv City State Administration:

“The court’s decision was not made under somebody’s influence; it was guided by the law. In the case of Siaivo the court fairly and comprehensively studied the case, and heard the evidence and explanations of the parties. The premises’ privatization was in fact undertaken with significant violations of the law. Therefore, the court took this into account and made a well-grounded decision. As soon as the court’s decision on the premises’ restitution to municipal ownership takes effect, the bookstore will surely be opened there once again. Many Kyivans remember the Siaivo of the old days, where everyone was able to find the titles he or she needed. At present the Kyiv City State Administration is determining the mechanism to promptly resume the sale of books in this place.”