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T his legal action was commenced in 2004, and to this day hangs in limbo at the hands of a suspect organization euphemistically styling itself the “European Court of Human Rights”. In his complaint, Boris Sheynes challenged as fraudulent and abusive the actions of the Government of Russia, which amounted to deprivation of property, citizenship, residency, and other basic civic and human rights violations. The despicable malfeasance of the Russian Government also fractured the image of Russia in the eyes of the civilized humanity, and dealt a staggering blow to the Russian cultural heritage. Those violations are continuing in nature because the Russian KGB junta, acting through its law enforcement organs, has been actively hiding the current condition and location of his art works and the identities of their holders. Nor has the Russian regime made any efforts (despite Boris Sheynes’s repeated requests) to investigate his complaints and inquiries regarding the whereabouts of the art works he had created and rightfully owned, of which he was illegally deprived.
The evil done in the Soviet period lives on. The KGB-controlled Russian Government has condoned, encouraged, and sponsored the unauthorized use of Boris Sheynes’s art and the suppression or distortion of information about him, which directly and adversely impacts his ratings, his civic and professional standing, and the marketability of all of his art, including that which he still has in possession as well as that which he was compelled to turn over to the State under coercion and fraudulent pretenses.
A glaring instance of this continuing campaign to defame and disgrace Boris Sheynes occurred in 1996, in the form of an exhibition of certain of his art pieces at the “Na Solyanke” State Exhibition Hall in central Moscow - an event Mr. Sheynes was neither invited to nor was apprised of in advance. The purported organizer of the exhibition, one Yuri Shibanov, had never been personally known to Mr. Sheynes. Nonetheless, Mr. Shibanov claimed a first-hand acquaintance with both the Artist and his work, and wrote Boris Sheynes a highly familiar and suspect letter purporting to come from an ancient friend which he never had been.
There is every indication that the exhibition was organized, and Shibanov’s letter dispatched, at the instigation of the sponsoring State authorities, and for a twofold purpose - to facilitate the sale of the art works illegally taken from Boris Sheynes back in 1985, and also to explain away the departure of Mr. Sheynes as non-political. The exhibition organizers’ press releases contained glaring false information about Sheynes, including hints at the purely voluntary and non-political character of his emigration to the West in 1985, which totally contradicted the fact that his departure was an exile in punishment for his artistic independence and in resentment of his growing success. The exhibition materials essentially portrayed Mr. Sheynes as a mere fortune-seeker headed for the Klondike gold deposits together with a whole flock of other Soviet artists, at a time when it had become relatively easier for people to go abroad. Furthermore, the State-sponsored dissemination of misrepresentations and distortions about Boris Sheynes’s work, the true reasons behind his departure from the country, and his current circumstances has caused the Artist a concrete damage in the form of a specious reduced “rating” of his professional accomplishments, which was evidently made by persons deprived of the knowledge of the true facts about the artist and his contribution to the Russian national art. Those uninformed ratings seriously hurt Sheynes’s professional image, reputation, and standing; jeopardize the marketability of his artwork; and, above all, insult the sacred memory of Iraida Fomina, Vladimir Favorsky and the other eminent Russian artists who contributed to his professional development and made possible his exhibitions.
The Russian Government-launched campaign of misrepresentation, distortion and concealment continues to this day. In December 2007, a friend of the Artist discovered, while “surfing” the Web, that a new solo exhibition of Boris Sheynes has been scheduled for January 12 through February 1, 2008, at the Exhibition Hall of the Moscow magazine “Nashe Nasledye” (“Our Heritage”). The Artist himself was never directly informed of this event, nor was invited to attend it or to weigh in on which art pieces of his should be displayed. By design, no meaningful publicity was provided for the event. It was announced by two or three barebones notices on Russian-language websites. Such meager publicity was obviously intended to keep the numbers of attendees low. The hours of the exhibition were prohibitive for an average working Muscovite – from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, with no access on Saturdays and Sundays In light of the 1996 in absentia exhibition, this event clearly is another measure undertaken by the Russian authorities in an effort to (1) reap profits from the art pieces Sheynes had left behind and (2) misrepresent to the Russian public his departure from the country in 1985 as a voluntary and non-political emigration rather than what it really was – forced removal and dispossession. The invidiousness of this continuing system of abuse, lying and distortion is amply demonstrated by the authorities’ use of obscure third-party strawmen such as Yuri Shibanov back in 1996 and “Nashe Nasledye,” a media organization, in 2008, neither of which was known to Mr. Sheynes.
The reasons why Boris Sheynes’s action against the Russian Government could not have been commenced earlier are multiple and weighty. First, all these years Boris Sheynes labored under the falsely induced belief that he made a valid gift of art works to the State (albeit under duress and coercion), and had no idea that he had been duped. Second, following his expulsion from the country and the robbery conducted by the State officials, Sheynes was (predictably) plunged into unremitting material privations in which he finds himself to this day. The lack of means was so dire that he and his wife could think of nothing other than how to earn enough to meet their monthly rent payment obligations. Sheynes had to make use of every minute of his time to produce art for sale. Mrs. Sheynes was growing seriously ill, and both husband and wife were too preoccupied with that calamity combined with the growing material plight to give any thought to the question of property rights restoration and return of their Russian citizenship. Indeed, Mr. Sheynes feared discussing this emotionally charged topic with his wife in such a fragile state of health. Only after Marina had passed away from acute leukemia in July 2000, could Boris bring himself to discuss this matter of property and civil rights restoration with his English-speaking son, who had by then acquired a legal education and agreed to help him with the preparation of his petitions in legal English.
At first, Boris Sheynes sought to resolve his dispute with the Russian government by peaceful means. Indeed, he stands against the notion of filthy lucre as a means of compensation for acts of rank injustice. Through a handwritten letter, he merely reminded the Russian Ministry of Culture of his continued existence and of his holding in possession a large number of art pieces which he created outside Russia; and suggested a Moscow-based exhibition of those works - in combination with those which he had left behind. This event he called an “account-rendering” exhibition because his intent was to make the Junta account for the art he was illegally deprived of at the time of being forced to leave the country.
However, the Ministry chose to characterize this as a mere proposal for an exhibition rather than a demand for accounting. Through its zealous officials, it issued a “polite” rejection. While acknowledging Sheynes’s “unusual” art, the Ministry’s crack pen-pushers contended that the proposal did not “fit” within the priorities and the schedule of the events sponsored by the Ministry. They further hinted that they might be willing to revisit the proposal in future, but only after the question of Boris Sheynes’s resettlement in Russia had been resolved; thus passing the “hot potato” on to other government organs. The irony of it is that Sheynes supposedly made a large gift of his own art to the State as represented by the Ministry, but the Ministry does not consider its “benefactor” a priority! Still worse, the Artist’s attempt to obtain an accounting for those same art works was thwarted by a pack of bureaucrats who were hell-bent on covering up the looting of an exiled artist’s property.
The next logical step for Boris Sheynes was to lodge a complaint with the Russian state prosecutor’s office (the so-called “Procuracy General” of the Russian Federation) in connection with the taking of Mr. Sheynes’s artistic property and other valuables under duress and coercion by Russian officials and their refusal to account for the same. Via letter, the Procuracy General was informed that the Office of Visas and Registrations had acted illegally in reviving a denied exit-visa application and depriving Boris Sheynes of his citizen’s passport, Moscow residency and membership in the Union of Artists. The Procuracy was further informed that the Director of the Moscow Art Fund, a Comrade Korobkov, had made a personal visit to Sheynes’s studio on Bryanskaia Ulitza 2 to select and take out with him hundreds of art pieces of proven market value. Also included were copies of documents issued by the Art Fund that purported to evidence the making of “an uncompensable gift.”
Similarly to the Ministry of Culture, the Procuracy adopted the “play the fool” strategy in dealing with the complaints of Boris Sheynes. Its senior officials contended, in virtually identical communications, that Mr. Sheynes’s information was somehow “insufficient,” and that he had to lodge his petition for investigation in the Procuracy district office of each area where the complained-of events occurred. Thus, a frail elderly man without any meaningful material resources was being directed to travel to Russia, where he had not retained any family or friends, in order to file complaints on a pattern of criminal misconduct by Russian State officials in various districts of Moscow, even though the “gift deed” he submitted to the Procuracy was abundantly detailed. The papers plainly revealed the date of the conveyance, the subject-matter, the identity of the witnessing officials, and the stamp of the Moscow Art Fund, a governmental entity affiliated with the Ministry of Culture. Whatever information the Procuracy needed to accept the case was contained in those documents and accompanying letter, as well as the archives of the old KGB now under the control of the Federal Security Service.
However, the Procuracy’s intent was not to investigate the crimes of the regime but to deny redress and cover up the robbery and abuse of Russian State officials who may either be alive or whose descendants may be in high places. The same obscene goal of covering up the governmental abuse, obfuscating a plain and straightforward criminal case, and shuffling the onus onto other agencies animated the Office of Ombudsman of Human Rights and the Office of Presidential Human Rights Advisor. They were in receipt of the same documents as the Procuracy, yet did not comment at all on the legal invalidity of the “gift deed.” The Ombudsman further declined to discuss this matter in a meaningful way with the Ministry of Culture or to file a complaint in the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. At a minimum, the Procuracy and the Human Rights Ombudsman should have informed the complainant of the bogus nature of the “gift” documents. Boris Sheynes was kept in ignorance until, after his filing of the Strasburg court complaint, a legal consultant in Britain chanced to review those documents, and determined their absolute nullity.
Boris Sheynes’s complaints to FSB Director Patruschev, Foreign Minister Lavrov, and Ambassador Ushakov, demanding the restoration of his citizenship, went completely unanswered.
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