In Place of a Conclusion
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...A lie, having once been used by the authorities
for seeming-ly good purposes, now becomes their essence,
their daily practice, if not their second nature.
Any rabble, including political rabble, is merciless
if convince of its own impunity.
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V. Maximov, "The Rabble in Power,"
Novoe Russkoe Slovo, Oct. 21, 1992
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We must solve the problems of human rights in democratic
Russia - but they also exist in developed capitalist countries.
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V. Bantin, Chief of the Russian Federation's
Dept. of Cultural Cooperation, quoted by A.
Grant, Novoe Russkoe Slovo, Oct. 4, 1992
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The history of human rights violations repeats itself, both in Russia and in America.
In 1988, when professional artist Alexandr Zhdanov began fighting in America for his creative property 1,500 works of art, which had been subjected to destruction in Moscow by American diplomats in cooperation with the Soviet KGB - Guroff and Hartman, the begetters of this tragedy, had no wish to hear about the human rights and the artistic rights they had trampled underfoot; instead, they traveled with great ceremony to Soviet Georgia to attend a conference on human rights.
In October 1992 the foreign affairs leadership of the Russian Federation - Vorontsov, Ordzhonikidze, Chizhik, Kolosovsky, Kosyrev, Sidorova. Gusakov, Derbennikov, and Baxmin - gathered in the Russian mission to the United Nations, where they talked about human rights with former political prisoners and with representatives of American organizations defending those rights. Andrei Kolosovsky, the deputy ambassador of the Russian Federation in Washington who in early 1992 had undertaken to correct the situation concerning Zhdanov's artistic property and authorship rights but by the middle of the year had backed away from his obligation, described the Russian Embassy as a defender of human rights, if not of the rights of the artist. Yuri Chizhik, the U.N. mission's press attache, underscored the new significance of the human rights problem in both the domestic and foreign affairs of the Russian Federation. But Kolosovsky and the Russian embassy, though paying lip service to the idea of a new attitude toward human rights, have proven in fact to be - as they always have been - its opponents, a fact they've confirmed through their handling of the Zhdanov affair since late 1991 and through the unfounded arrest of Zhdanov's wife in the Russian embassy on August 18,1992.
From 1988 through 1992, Zhdanov has appealed to Congress more than 10 times, addressing his question of government-level misdeeds on the part of specific individuals in the U.S. State Department to each of the 537 members of the House of Representatives and 100 senators, naming the major violators of his rights as a human being and as a professional artist - including Gregory Guroff, former U.S. cultural attachd in Moscow, who has worked for the USIA since 1985 and has been the coordinator of the Presidential commission on Soviet-American Cultural Initiatives, the director of the Presidential exchange program, and who intends to run a huge film festival in Moscow in 1994 on "The Roots of American Democracy."
For two years (1988-1989) the U.S. State Department denied the very fact of Zhdanov's gift to America ever having been made and consistently deflected the puzzled artist to Guroff, who was already at that time sidestepping responsibility. "Men, with the help of the United States Senate, the fact of the gift having been made became indisputable. The State Department and the White House, headed by the Secretary of State, the President,the Vice President, and their chief assistants on matter of human rights and the law took their guilty subordinate under their protective wing, closing investigations in the USIA, the OSI GAO, the FBI, and the CIA, passing false information to the Senate concerning the State Department's investigation of the matter, and burying the constitutional right of the victim to impeachment of the guilty U.S. government employee in the Senate's Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Today, after five (!!!) years, there is still no end in sight to this paradox and mockery of human rights and an artist's rights, regardless of Guroff's activities in Washington and in Moscow', where this public servant with the unclean conscience and unclean hands discusses the raging piracy in Russian cinema and teaches Muscovites about law and democracy.
Sen. Glenn, who serves on the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, in replying to a letter from Zhdanov on October 20, 1992, stated that there had been some progress made in Congressional actions on
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the artist's behalf, but underscored that it was pointless to hope for further help, as the lawmakers had exhausted all their possibilities.
After nearly five years of fighting for Zhdanov's human rights and his rights as an artist the problem remains unsolved, because:
- Guroff, instead of answering for his crime, is prospering in the field of American-Russian cultural exchange;
- Matlock, who supported Guroff, has been replaced in Moscow by Strauss and thus has sidestepped responsibility;
- Mr. Fontroy, a member of the Congressional Commission on Human Rights, considers the artist's fight for his artistic property to be unconnected to the question of human rights, as opposed to the problem of the Moscow passport, which the commission has been considering for more than a year.
- Rep. Ted Weiss, who headed the Congressional Arts Caucus and who had undertaken to help the artist, is dying;
- Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, from the District of Columbia, testifies to her complete inability to help the artist regain his art and his artistic rights as defended by the U.S. Constitution-,
- Aides to Sen. Domenici backed off of their promised support of the artist, although they noted that the Senate is aware of of other intrigues surrounding American government employees with Russian works of art;
- Sen. Helms cut off his assistance in mid-stride, after pressure was put on Kathleen Train from his Senate office by Mr. Glassman from the State Department.
- Sen. Graham's efforts since the summer of 1992 to bring about an investigation of the matter of Alexandr Zhdanov's gift of art to America in the GAO's Office of Special Investigations have been fruitless;
- Secretary of State Baker and his legislative assistant, Janet Mullins, who was the source of the disinformation fed to the Senate, have left their posts in the State Department and moved over to the White House to support Bush in his reelection bid;
- The President and Vice President of the United States are not concerned with the average man in America and his problems, and are not concerned with the problems of culture in this country. Foreign affairs have swallowed all their attention;
- Every division of the U.S. Department of State is acting in unison in their effort to isolate the artist and his long, exhausting struggle for his inalienable human rights;
- President-Elect Clinton's aides could not be concerned with the problems of the artist and his human Tights in the heat of the election campaign (materials documenting the problem were personally presented to James Carville, through Nancy Soderberg, in Little Rock on Sept 11, 1992).
Joel Flatow, legislative director for the Congressional Arts Caucus, admitted his complete powerlessness to affect a solution to the problem within the U.S. legal system. On his advise, on October 22, 1992, the artist delivered a collection of material documenting his struggle for his inalienable human rights, including the attendant violations of the United States Constitution (Amendments 1, 4, and 14), to Boutros Ghali of the United Nations and to the heads of the U.S. and Russian missions to the U.N., Mr. Pickering and Mr. Vorontsov.
The people in power, in America as in Russia, believe themselves to be gods, but have placed their souls at the service of evil.
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(Translated from the Russian original.)
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