Original Article (Russian Language): "Kievskie Vedomosti" (3/31/2009)
Source: http://www.kv.com.ua/archive/199494/social/199547.html

Large Car Garage built instead of Bedzyk Heritage Museum

Vorzel, Suburb of Kyiv, Ukraine:    Viktor Yushchenko, Third President of Ukraine, was involved in the Vorzelsky scandal between the widow of the famous Ukrainian writer Yuri Bedzyk and the Vorzel Village Council. The reason is the desire of the former wife of the writer Lyudmila Suhonyuk to lease 24 acres of land adjacent to the family estate to equip the future Bedzyk Heritage Museum. However, a large car garage was built instead on this land.

In order to avoid biased interpretations and twisting of facts, let us quote a letter from Lyudmila Suhonyuk, with which she turned to Yuri Bedzyk's old friend, a famous Ukrainian poet, chairman of the Congress of Writers of Ukraine, Yuri Kaplan. Moreover, it became the property of the public and served as the basis for considering scandalous collisions in the judiciary:

"Even under the old regime, I rented 24 acres of land that had long belonged to our famous Bedzyk-Yakovenko family and built a garage there. When the question arose about its redemption according to the expert monetary assessment, which is a market one, what then began ... "

Let us set the emotions aside and focus on the facts. But for this we ask ourselves a question: why was it necessary to rent the land plot belonging to the "famous Bedzyk-Yakovenko family"? It turns out, because the family estate is located on an area of ​​34.5 acres, and the mentioned adjacent 24 acres of decades ago, the Bedzyk family transferred to the Vorzel Village Council.

Suhonyuk appealed to the Local Authorities with a request to lease the adjacent territory. The motive was to preserve the memory of the Bedzyk dynasty. On this site, Yuri Bedzyk's Father (Dmitry Bedzyk) personally planted a Canadian Norway maple tree with his own hands. Since the noble intentions of Lyudmila Suhonyuk and the Local Authorities coincided, the Vorzel Village Council leased the land to Suhonyuk. But instead of a museum, Lyudmila Suhonyuk built a large Gar Garage on this place.

After the Car Garage, Lyudmila Suhonyuk decided to purchase this land at the lowest market price. The question arises: Why buy out the land on which the memorial complex will be located? While the local authorities were pondering this, Lyudmila Suhonyuk went to Court. "I filed a lawsuit against the illegal actions of the administration with the Pechersk District Court and won. The Chairman of the Village Council S. Kukharsky appealed against this decision in the Highest Court. But the Supreme Court of Appeals left the decision of the Pechersk District Court unchanged, and it came into force. S. Kukharsky submitted a complaint to the Supreme Administrative Court."

And what about the Vorzel Village Authorities? They had to give in, especially since the Supreme Court of Appeals supported the Plaintiff Lyudmila Suhonyuk. But the Council continued to demand that she acquire the ill-fated plot at a commercial price.

It is interesting that during this litigation Ms. Suhonyuk becam a real revolutionary: She criticizes everything she sees around her and defends herself all the time. Therefore, probably, the usual fireworks near her estate is perceived by shelling. Lyudmila Suhonyuk viewed two developments as a gross violation of her personal rights:

#1: Deputy Commission's decision (without her approval) to include the house where the Bedzyk dynasty lived in the list of Vorzel's Cultural Heritage.

#2: Local Residents organized evenings (without her presence) dedicated to the work of Yuri Bedzyk.

Lyudmila Suhonyuk wrote:

"To my numerous applications, where I demand extracts from the minutes of sessions, commissions, annual reports, testifying to the persecution of our family, they do not provide me with formal replies."

Or maybe the reason for generic letters is banal - there is essentially nothing to answer about "persecution". Be that as it may, but Ms. Suhonyuk does not back down and turns to Yuri Kaplan. "The scale of the persecution," judging from her letter, is enormous, and therefore the entire world must participate in resolving her problem.

Lyudmila Suhonyuk contacted several diplomats of the highest rank who knew and respected Yuri Bedzyk ... so that they put their signatures to the appeal of the Ukrainian elite to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She also contacted the world famous chess player Anatoly Karpov, Head of The Peace Foundation in Russia, and asked him to help in solving this case.

In further letters, Ms. Suhonyuk recalled that Yuri Bedzyk was also the President of the Ukrainian-German Society: "I am sure that the members of this society in Germany ... will not be left out either."

In general, the demands are categorical: both the Lemkosoyuz and well-known directors, public figures, influential international centers “need to demand an investigation with international observers so that Irpen law enforcement officers cannot interfere in it.” The goal is one - "to stop attempts to restore the trends of 1937 in our country." And all this, we note, in connection with the coveted piece of land, on which a large car garage was built instead of the planned Bedzyk Heritage Museum.

But what about the Chairman of the Congress of Writers of Ukraine? “The facts stated in the letter stirred up the creative intelligentsia. It's hard to believe that the “king of the local scale” could arrange such tortures for a well-known family not only in Ukraine, but also abroad for two years ”. The President of the country, who personally paid tribute to the memory of Yuri Bedzyk in connection with his death in the mournful days of August 2008, as befits a guarantor of rights and freedoms, sends an order to the chairman of the Kiev Regional State Administration with a demand "to immediately intervene and stop the willfulness of the official."

At the same time, Ms. Suhonyuk sends a letter to the office of the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Nina Karpacheva. This is how the Vorzel village council finds itself in the line of fire, when instead of solving current problems of preparing infrastructure for Euro 2012 and social problems in a budget crisis, at all levels they have to prove they are right. In order to dot all the i's, an extraordinary session of the Vorzel Council was held the other day. Guess what the first decision of the self-government body was? In the conditions of an unprecedented crisis, it has also become unprecedented: the deputies send an open letter to the president, in which they ask in every possible way to facilitate the implementation of the demands of the Vorzel public, namely: "The use of the lands of the historical heritage of a famous family solely for the purpose of building a museum of the Bedzyk dynasty and installing a memorial plaque on the house where they lived." And with their second decision, the deputies granted the right to purchase a plot of 24 acres to Lyudmila Suhonyuk. Thus, the drama reached its finale. But the question remained unanswered: what about the common goal - the creation of a cultural center of the Bedzyk dynasty?

In 1956, the family of Dmitry Ivanovich Bedzyk, a classic of Ukrainian literature, bought a dacha on the street. K. Liebknecht, 16 in the village of Vorzel. Here he wrote a number of novels and plays, including the well-known: "The Heart of My Friend" and "The Dnieper is Burning." Since 1988, his son Yuri Bedzyk also lived in Vorzel. For many years he headed the Kiev branch of the Writers' Union of Ukraine. His novels are filled with high patriotism and humanist ideals. For his last novel, "Seven Secrets of the Great War," the writer was awarded the "Andrey Golovko" NSPU Prize in 2000.

For 20 years, from 1978 to 1998, he headed the Ukrainian Peace Foundation and is known for many peace initiatives and actions around the world. In August 2008, writer and public figure Yuri Bedzyk passed away after a serious illness, leaving priceless creative assets for the next generations, and material assets for his wife...

Irina SOTNIKOVA