319 West 107 Street, New York NY 10025 ○phone: 212 864 7752 ○ fax: 212 864 7704 ○ e-mail: director@roerich.org
April 27, 2002
Mr. Yuli M. Vorontsov, President
International Centre of the Roerichs
3/5 Maly Znamensky pereulok
Moscow, 121019
Russia
Dear Mr. Vorontsov,
I apologize for the delay in answering your letter of April 4. However, there were many conflicting statements referred to in your letter that I needed to verify in order to properly respond to the issues. First, I wish to address your concerns about the legality of the issues. Second, I will, as you suggest, address the ethical aspects.
The paragraph in your letter regarding Amherst College and the transfer of publishing rights to Sfera is mistaken on several counts. There was no request by Sfera to publish the entire collection and no request for transfer of copyright. The notebooks were held by Amherst College in this country, and, in 1996, the then Curator of Special Collections, John Lancaster, granted permission to Sfera to publish fragments of them that were to be used as additional materials for Sfera’s previously published books of Agni Yoga. The letter from Amherst’s lawyers, Bowditch & Dewey, acknowledges that Mr. Lancaster did indeed grant that permission.
When the International Centre of the Roerichs questioned Amherst as to whether permission to publish “The Diaries of E. I. Roerich” – that is, the full text of the diaries – had been given to anyone, the answer, of course, was in the negative, since Sfera had simply requested permission to publish fragments.
We believe that Sfera had every right to publish fragments of the diaries, since Sfera had applied to Amherst College for permission, and in 1996 the Curator of Special Collections, Mr. Lancaster, had granted that permission. For you to state that their actions are “illegal” is absurd, and makes a travesty of democratic law, which deems a party innocent until proven guilty.
Regarding your second point, someone claiming copyright violation by another party must first prove that he has the copyright. If that ownership of copyright has not been proven, there is no violation of copyright. It appears now that neither International Centre of the Roerichs nor the Nicholas Roerich Museum has legal ownership of the copyrights to the diary notebooks of Helena Roerich, since no legal documents have been shown by either that grants that right. You yourself have held that letters are insufficient as legal documents. To the best of our knowledge, therefore, nobody owns those copyrights.
As for the author’s copies of the originals of E.I.’s diaries for the years 1920-1935 that were given to the Roerich Museum, you should know that these are not copies, but original derivative compilations that are different from the notebooks at the International Roerich Center. This can be substantiated by comparing the text published in the Threshold book with the Amherst manuscripts. As Helena Roerich wrote on December 3, 1937, “Of course, you all know that the series of manuscripts from my diaries from March 24, 1920 to February 3, 1935, that are now in New York, are handwritten by me, in Russian, and that they are originals.”
This was written sixty-six years ago. With reference to the timing of the publication of these works, Helena Roerich changed her instructions from time to time. And the parts of her letters that refer to their eventual publication suggest sorrow and dissatisfaction with the circumstances that necessitated deferring their publication to a future date. In this connection, your letter mentions “the author’s will.” There was no will by her that stated what should be published and at what time.
The record of the history of Svetoslav Roerich’s bequest of the “Roerich Heritage” must be corrected. In 1990, Svetoslav Roerich gave “the heritage” to the Soviet Roerich Fund, not to the International Centre of the Roerichs, which at that time did not even exist. Furthermore, no one has yet shown any document in which Svetoslav Roerich transferred to any entity the exclusive rights to publish this “heritage.” The facts are that the Soviet Roerich Fund was dissolved, and the International Centre of the Roerichs was formed as a completely new organization. In the eyes of the law of the Russian Federation, therefore, they are not a legal successor to the Soviet Roerich Fund. They perhaps have a legal claim to ownership of the diaries that are in their possession, but have not established a legal claim to the copyrights in question, which by law must be specifically transferred in a legal agreement, and any legal action pursued on that premise is therefore false and perhaps fraudulent.
On the ethical aspects of these issues, I should like to say that the actions that the International Centre of the Roerichs has pursued over the last few years have been totally at odds with the spirit and the teachings of Nicholas and Helena Roerich. They would be shocked and saddened by the personal attacks and accusations against both Sfera and Daniel Entin, who has unjustly been vilified as a “traitor” by Ludmila Shaposhnikova. It is the International Centre of the Roerichs that, in its desire to grasp a monopolistic control of the Roerich name and all things connected to the Roerichs, initiated and fueled an attack of slanderous hate mail against Daniel Entin. It is the International Centre of the Roerichs that must examine its ethical standards.
In the case of Sfera, instead of filing a legal complaint of copyright infringement, which would have been the appropriate thing to do, the International Centre of the Roerichs engineered a police raid on Sfera that resulted in the confiscation of their equipment and documents, and the sealing of their premises. This was in violation of the laws of the Russian Federation, and most definitely contrary to the spirit of Nicholas and Helena Roerich, whose works, in their own words, were to be placed “at the crossroads” for all. In this connection, we have been fully aware of Svetoslav Roerich’s instruction to Daniel Entin and other Trustees of our Museum that a new time for openness had come, that nothing should be kept secret, and that everything should be made available to everyone.
If I have an opportunity to make a “proper statement for the broad public,” as you put it, that statement will include all of the above, and I hope will assist in preventing the further dissemination of false information. Only when the attacks against Daniel Entin and our co-workers throughout the world cease, will it be truly possible to join with you in mutual trust and creativity.
Yours Sincerely,
Edgar Lansbury, President,
Nicholas Roerich Museum
cc:
League for the Protection of Culture
Association “Peace Through Culture”
Council of Roerich Organizations
Museum of Oriental Art, Moscow
Sfera Publishing House
Delphis Magazine
Estonian Roerich Society
Ural Roerich Society
Siberian Roerich Society
Ukrainian Roerich Society
Latvian Roerich Society
Agni 3 Internet Journal
Grani Epokhi Internet Journal
Office of the Prosecutor, Central Administration