www.ukrweekly.com INSIDE:• Ukrainian Broadcasting Network goes off the air — page 3. • Stranded freighter to leave New York harbor – page 3. • “Dity Ditiam” project helps Chornobyl victims — page 10. Published by the Ukrainian National Association Inc., a fraternal non-profit association Vol. LXVII HE KRAINIANNo. 33 THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 1999 EEKLY$1.25/$2 in Ukraine Supreme Court overrules Election Commission, HryvniaT drops in Uvalue by 20 percent W Gas shortage seen as cause of destabilization admits more candidates into presidential race by Roman Woronowycz ures to stabilize the market for oil prod- by Roman Woronowycz as well. A day later the court accepted Kyiv Press Bureau ucts. Kyiv Press Bureau the appeal of Mr. Rzhavskyi, who leads “If we get a balanced situation in the the Single Family political association. KYIV – A gasoline shortage in market, we don’t exclude that we will KYIV – Ukraine’s Supreme Court, On August 11, Slavic Party nominee Mr. Ukraine has caused the destabilization of resort to [an intervention],” said Mr. exercising its authority and independ- Bazyliuk found salvation in another the hryvnia and a 20 percent drop in its Yuschenko on August 11. ence for the first time on the national Supreme Court decision and was regis- value against the dollar in the last two A day earlier, as the currency slightly political arena, has overturned several tered as the 13th candidate for president. weeks. rebounded, the NBU chairman said he Central Election Commission decisions The Supreme Court has been basing The Ukrainian currency, which had saw no reason to expand the corridor and not to register presidential candidates. its decision in each case on CEC’s failure held at around 4 hrv to the dollar on the that the currency would naturally, move In the last week the CEC has been to uphold its own procedures. Most Ukrainian currency exchange for most of back within it. “It has been an unpleasant forced by the Supreme Court to register notably, the court has ruled that the elec- the year, began to fall about a week after brief episode,” said Mr. Yuschenko, who four candidates whom it had rejected tion commission should have determined gas prices more than quadrupled in the has been appearing on national television after deciding that each one had gathered within five days of receiving the nomi- country almost overnight beginning on regularly to contain some of the currency less than the 1 million authentic signa- nees’ signature petitions whether the can- July 16. Although prices have fallen back damage and build trust in the hryvnia, tures that are required to get on the didates could be registered. by more than a third from a high mark of which to some degree has been propelled October presidential elections ballot. According to the Supreme Court, around 6 hrv for a liter, the currency has downward by public mistrust in the Each of the four – Vasyl Onopenko, when the CEC determined that any of the continued to decline. inherent stability of the currency. Mykola Haber, Oleksander Rzhavskyi candidates had gathered less than the The currency plunge became critical The hryvnia’s fall has been exacerbat- and Mykola Bazyliuk – had submitted minimum of 1 million signatures on August 9 when the hryvnia surpassed ed by a run, albeit a modest one, on cur- more than the required minimum by the required by law, with at least 30,000 the upper limit of the currency corridor rency exchange points, where Ukrainians July 12 deadline. The CEC had ruled that from each of at least 18 oblasts, it then set by the National Bank of Ukraine at have been changing their hryvni into dol- hundreds of thousands of those signa- was compelled to give each candidate an 4.60 hrv to the dollar for 1999. The is a lars in anticipation of further devaluation. tures gathered by the four presidential additional two days to scrape up the value parameter set by the NBU to foster Mr. Yuschenko has stated that the hopefuls and two other possible candi- needed balance. confidence in the stability of the National Bank of Ukraine would black- dates were fraudulent and rejected their In each case the court ruled that Ukrainian currency against the dollar and ball banks that have been exchanging candidacies on that basis. because the CEC failed to follow the other foreign currencies. their own hryvni for dollars; he offered a On August 6, Ukraine’s Supreme procedure as outlined in Ukraine’s presi- On August 10 the foreign exchange list of 12 such banks, among them sever- Court, to which all six of the rejected dential election law, it was now required rate for the hryvnia dropped to 5.05 to al major financial players. candidates had appealed the CEC deci- to extend a spot on the October ballot to the dollar before strengthening some. Mr. Yushchenko’s restraint has been sions, ruled against the CEC in the mat- the candidate. NBU Chairman Viktor Yuschenko has supported by President Leonid Kuchma, ter of Mr. Onopenko and demanded that The CEC has defended its actions and refrained from using any of the $1.2 bil- the CEC immediately register the who on August 7 said the fall of the hryv- stated that the court is rendering deci- lion in foreign currency reserves that the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Party nia was not totally unexpected. sions without a full presentation of the bank holds because such an intervention leader. “Look at the state of the economy,” evidence. would not support the hryvnia. He said On August 9 it decided that the CEC said the president. Do you think that the CEC Chairman Mykhailo Riabets said the hryvnia will only strengthen after the had no grounds to throw aside the candi- at an August 10 press conference that he government puts together effective meas- (Continued on page 13) dacy of Mr. Haber of the Patriotic Party, does not agree with the Supreme Court rulings, but that he is following its orders and registering the candidates in a ges- ture of respect for the rule of law. Long-lost estate of J.S. Bach’s son discovered in Kyiv “The Supreme Court has not given us by Christoph Wolff research on the musical sources of the by Carl Friedrich Zelter, presented a any documentation to explain the ration- Bach family. celebrated performance of Bach’s St. ale behind its ruling,” explained Mr. CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The long- Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, an asso- Matthew Passion in 1829 under the Riabets. “They have never asked for a lost estate of Johann Sebastian Bach’s ciate of the Ukrainian Research direction of Zelter’s pupil, the young key piece of evidence: the actual signa- second son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Institute at Harvard University, who Felix Mendelssohn. Its music archive ture petitions submitted by the candi- Bach, has been discovered in Kyiv, directs a project on Russian and contains well over 5,000 items (most- dates,” he added. where it is preserved as part of the Ukrainian archives, has been searching ly manuscripts) that have been pre- The Supreme Court has said that it does not need to review the signatures music archive of the Berlin Sing- in Ukraine in connection with her served in excellent conditions. Even because it is not questioning the veracity Akademie. In order to protect it from book, “Trophies of War and Empire.” before its wartime disappearance, as a of the CEC conclusions, merely the pro- being destroyed during the war, the The close collaboration between Prof. private collection without a profes- cedures that were used. Sing-Akademie’s archive, with one of Wolff and Dr. Grimsted, together with sional archivist, the materials were Mr. Riabets said the judicial decisions the world’s most important collections Prof. Hennadii Boriak, deputy director largely inaccessible to scholars, and of 18th century music, including sig- of the Institute of the Archaeography would be appealed to the Supreme Court its provisionally catalogued holdings Collegium. nificant and largely unique Bach fami- and Source Studies of the National have never been systematically stud- ly materials, had been moved from Academy of Sciences of Ukraine led to The CEC was overwhelmed in the last ied. week before the deadline for submitting Berlin to Ullersdorf Castle, Silesia, in the recent discovery. Earlier last month The estate of C.P.E. Bach (1714- 1943. The archive then disappeared Prof. Wolff, Dr. Grimsted and Barbara petitions, when it received some 15 mil- 1788), which forms a central portion of lion signatures from candidates. Mr. and with no information available Wolff, music cataloguer of Harvard’s the Sing-Akademie archive, includes about its post-war fate, it has been Houghton Library, identified and Riabets had stated at the time that the music by his father and brothers, a col- deluge of last-minute submissions was, missing for over half a century and examined the Sing-Akademie collec- lection of works by his father’s ances- long feared destroyed. tion in the Central State Archive- in his opinion, an attempt to clog the sys- tors called “Old Bach Archive” (many tem and compromise it. This writer, professor of music at Museum of Literature and Art of in copies from J. S. Bach’s hand) and, Harvard University and dean of its Ukraine in Kyiv. The candidates, while happily accept- most importantly, the bulk of his own ing the Supreme Court rulings, maintain Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The Berlin Sing-Akademie, found- compositions in autograph or author- that they have each legally gathered far has been following several leads to the ed in 1791 by Carl Friedrich Fasch (a ized copies, among them 20 Passions, more than the minimum number of sig- whereabouts of the material for more colleague and friend of the younger natures required and that the CEC deci- than two decades in connection with Bach) and directed from 1800 to 1832 (Continued on page 11) (Continued on page 13) 2 THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 1999 No.