Anti-Semitism Case Drags on in Kharkiv Court
After four months, a case involving accusations of anti-Semitism continues to drag on in a Kharkiv district court.
The Association of National Cultural Unions of Ukraine is pressing charges against the Kharkiv oblast chapter of Prosvita for anti-Semitic and unconstitutional comments in its children’s newspaper, Dzhereltse. The article in question, entitled “Seven Jews for Every Layman” (the title used the word zhyd for Jew, the official Ukrainian term until about 1930, still used in Polish and Czech, but considered offensive in Russian and also in Ukrainian by those without much knowledge of the language — Ed.) was published in the September 1999 issue of a newspaper for extracurricular (after-school) reading published by the Kharkiv Oblast Chapter of the All- Ukrainian Prosvita Society.
The article begins by pointing out that Ukrainians are “God-chosen” (bohobrany), while the Jews are “Jehovah-chosen” (Yevoobrany), implying that the Jews and Ukrainians worship different gods. Then the author, Khvedir Slobodaniuk, continues by tracing the historical relations between Ukrainians and Jews, explaining why Jews were to blame for the misfortunes of the Ukrainian people. For example, he writes that Jews were guilty of making Ukrainians drink vodka, helping the Bolsheviks take power, for the Great Famine of 1933, and argues that today’s politicians in Ukraine, Russia, and even the United States are paid off with Jewish money.
The article asks, “Who holds power in Ukraine, and from whom was independence won?” — implying that it is Jews who are really in control, and states that Kuchma is being bribed by Berezovsky. The final line of the article tells the reader before voting in the Ukrainian national election to consider “who is standing with today’s candidates for President holding sacks of Jewish money and why.”
Anna Tymoshevska, director of the Association of National Cultural Unions of Ukraine (ANKTU), says that this article was clearly not intended for children to read, not only because of its material content, but because the voting age in Ukraine is 18 and the newspaper is for schoolchildren. She said that after the article was published parents feared to send their kids to the Jewish school in Kharkiv, which is located in the same building as a state public school, and a guard had to be posted to allay fears for their safety.
ANKTU is pressing for this kind of information to be made illegal, for the newspaper Dzhereltse to be closed, and for Prosvita to pay a million hryvnias to ANKTU for moral damages.
However, Anatoly Kindratenko, the chief editor of Dzhereltse and director of the Kharkiv branch of Prosvita, says there is nothing wrong with the article. He says that the information is true and was published because “we want our children to know the true history of our nation. We want to make them citizens of Ukraine, and not cosmopolitans” (the word cosmopolitan was used as a coded reference to Jews during the Stalinist campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans” — Ed.).
It seems there is no end in sight for the case, which is being tried in Kharkiv’s Kyivsky District Court by Judge Volodymyr Hedenko. The independent expert, Professor Ihor Mykhailin of philology at the Kharkiv National University, has been testifying for three days, and continued to do so until the defense had exhausted their questions. On Thursday, August 14, he was answering questions on the etymology of the words “zhyd”, “Jew” (yevrei), and another word for Jew (yud), which the defense was trying to prove were synonymous.
In Mykhailin’s personal opinion the article is nonsense. “It is negative, and it promotes a conflict relationship between Jews and Ukrainians,” he said. “There is truth mixed with lies here, and there is no proof for most of [the author’s] statements.”
The case is complicated, however, by personal animosity between some of the participants. The president of ANKTU is Oleksandr Feldman, a local businessman and philanthropist who owns the biggest trade market in Kharkiv, as well as the Krasnaya Zvezda pharmaceutical company and several other large enterprises. His company, AVEC, also operates a charity for supporting orphans, veterans, and other disadvantaged people in Kharkiv.
Kindratenko implies that Feldman is able to control the outcome of the case by paying the judge, and that he is using the case to climb higher in national and international politics. Other literature published by local Prosvita points to Feldman as one of the Jews controlling Ukrainian politics, and calls Leonid Kuchma “the president of the Jews.” Kindratenko says that the fact they have two Jews on their legal team shows that they are not anti-Semitic, but apparently at least one of these men has a separate personal issue with Feldman from an earlier time.
The Prosvita office on the main street of Kharkiv is decorated with pictures of Ukrainian national heroes, historical maps of Ukraine, and icons. The members, who Kindratenko says number several hundred, believe strongly that the only language that should be spoken in Ukraine is Ukrainian, a fact somewhat unusual in Kharkiv. Beside the entrance is a sign which says that “those who do not speak the state language are either guests, mercenaries, or invaders” and a petition against parliament Deputies speaking a “foreign language” has about thirty signatures.
Tymoshevska says that Prosvita’s newspapers are funded by the Ukrainian government using taxpayers’ money, but Kindratenko denies this. He says the newspaper is prepared and printed on a set of computers donated by the Renaissance Foundation, but that it is funded only by its subscription price of 15 kopiykas an issue sold in post offices. Timoshevska maintains that the newspapers were given to children at school, and placed in apartment mailboxes.
ANKTU, in addition to defending the constitutional rights of the Jewish community, also includes, among others, representatives of Azerbaijani, Korean, Armenian, Roma, Tatar and German associations, and finances cultural events such as festivals, Sunday schools and artistic events.
ANKTU is hoping the case will end by fall, but local Prosvita insists that it still has a wealth of material to present. The prosecution complains that the defense is needlessly delaying the process. With half the spectators asleep in court, very little media interest in the case, and the judge himself looking as if he can’t wait to go on vacation, it is anybody’s guess how long it could go is on.
EDITORIAL COMMENT
The Kharkiv case is similar to what happened in Kyiv several years ago when Oleksandr Supruniuk, editor-in-chief of what was then the newspaper of the national Prosvita Society, began to publish clearly anti-Semitic materials and was arrested “for inflaming national hatred,” but as the Canadian experience with its own hate law shows, drawing a legal distinction as to what differentiates illegal hate-mongering from odious but lawful stupidity is almost impossible, and the offending editor was freed. The Prosvita Society leadership disassociated itself from the newspaper, which Mr. Supruniuk still hopes to revive but lacks the money. The Prosvita Society does receive a small government subsidy, basically for book publishing. Ukrainian Prosvita President Pavlo Movchan has always and consistently opposed any expression of anti-Semitism in the organization, but he clearly cannot control everything local organizations do.
