Liliya Grinevich: The Story of an Illiterate but Armed Minister. Part 1
Year after year, climbing the career ladder, skipping several rungs at a time, the modest Lviv native Liliya Hrynevych soared to the skies. Serving Leonid Chernovetsky, Party of Regions member Vitaliy Zhuravsky, and opposition leaders Yuriy Lutsenko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and Yulia Tymoshenko, a schoolteacher managed to rise to the post of Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine. Thanks to her reformist "grips," the Maidan minister regularly finds herself at the center of the most high-profile scandals. Today, the name of the plagiarist minister has become synonymous with the utopia of the national education system. But despite everything, convicted of corruption, plagiarism, theft of land from ATO soldiers, and illegally obtaining award weapons, Liliya Mykhailivna remains on the horse. But for how long? After all, sooner or later, horses throw off their amateur riders.
Liliya Grinevich. In ten years from student to school principal
Liliya Mykhailivna Hrynevych is a native of Lviv. She was born on May 13, 1965. She holds two degrees: in biochemistry and economics and management. During her student years, the minister sang in the "Cheremosh" choir at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, a feat she is very proud of. According to Liliya Mykhailivna, singing Ukrainian songs in the mid-1980s was a true achievement.
While still a senior student, in 1987, the future minister began her career as a lab assistant in the Department of Biochemistry of the Faculty of Biology. After four months, Hrynevych was hired as an after-school teacher at School No. 70 in Lviv. A year later, she was already teaching biology to students.
After four years of teaching, Liliya Mikhailovna began to rapidly rise through the ranks. In 1992, Grinevich was appointed deputy director for national education at Secondary School No. 7. Two years later, in 1994, the future minister became deputy director for educational and upbringing work in the senior grades of Specialized School No. 53. Four years later, Grinevich was promoted again, and in August 1998, she became director of Specialized School No. 28.
Bon Voyage: I'm going to live... in Kyiv!
Four years pass again, and colossal changes occur in the Grinevichs' lives. Suddenly, in 2002, the young couple of teachers uproots their lives and sets off to conquer Kyiv. As it turns out, it was Vitaly Zhuravsky who had invited the Lviv residents to the capital.Read more about it in the article Vitaly Zhuravsky: From the trash can back to parliament), who would later become an advisor to Viktor Yanukovych and a member of parliament from the Party of Regions, and then almost end his political career in the lustration trash bin.
So, in 2002, Zhuravsky took over as State Secretary of the Ministry of Education and Science, and was later appointed First Deputy Minister of Education and Science. It was at this time that Grinevich received her first Moscow position. Lilia Mikhailovna was offered a position as a senior lecturer in the Department of Education Management at the Step Institute of Economics and Law. At the same time, Grinevich took a part-time position as Director of the Testing Technologies Center at the International Renaissance Foundation.
Another four years passed, and an employee of the International Renaissance Foundation, sponsored by the United States (Soros), created the Ukrainian Center for Education Quality Assessment and became its director.
As soon as Zhuravsky received the post of deputy head of the Kyiv City State Administration, Hrynevych quit her job and, thanks to the patronage of her benefactor, joined the “young team” of Leonid Chernovetsky (Read more about it in the article Leonid Chernovetsky: How "Lenya Kosmos" robbed Kyiv and moved to Georgia). At the same time, associates of the future minister noted that Hrynevych received the position of head of the Main Department of Education and Science of the Kyiv City State Administration not only with Zhuravskyi's help but also thanks to her relatives. They had a joint business with the notorious pastor of the Embassy of God, Sunday Adelaja, and the pastor had direct influence on Chernovetskyi.
Hrynevych accumulated most of her wealth while working for the Lenya-Kosmos team. It's no secret that during Chernovetskyi's tenure, pseudo-charitable foundations at Kyiv schools and kindergartens were actively developing, with parents and businessmen investing considerable sums into them. Part of this money went toward paying for the Kyiv City State Administration's protection. During this same period, Hrynevych, as a civil servant, received an apartment from the construction company Zhileinveststroy-UKB.
But as soon as Leonid Chernovetskyi's and, consequently, Vitaliy Zhuravskyi's chair began to wobble, the once "devoted" Hrynevych joined the opposition. Her dismissal in 2009 was accompanied by a major scandal. As Olesiy Davydenko, a BYuT deputy on the Kyiv City Council, noted at the time, Hrynevych left the capital's education system in a deplorable state. Schools were unprepared for the start of the school year, there were no funds for teacher medical examinations or for repairs to classrooms, restrooms, or cafeterias. Teachers were in arrears in their salaries, and district administrations were forced to take out loans to pay their salaries. But Hrynevych no longer cared about these problems, as a political future was looming large before her. Incidentally, with Hrynevych's departure from the Kyiv City State Administration, another scandalous fact came to light: a citizen of a foreign country—Poland—was "found" in the Ukrainian civil service at the Kyiv City State Administration. The investigation into this incident was stopped as soon as Grinevich became a people's deputy.
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Liliya Mykhailivna's official biography contains numerous gaps and inconsistencies. For example, Hrynevych claims to have completed two-year internships at Warsaw and Columbia Universities, where she studied education reform. Thanks to her experience abroad, in 2005, Liliya Mykhailivna earned a PhD, defending a dissertation on "Trends in the Decentralization of Education Management in Contemporary Poland," which would be deemed plagiarism 11 years later. Incidentally, the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine still remembers how Hrynevych's dissertation was rushed together, and the future minister ultimately didn't even bother to read the abstract.
It's also interesting that the alleged period of internship abroad coincides with Grinevich's time as a civil servant. Therefore, it's not entirely clear under what circumstances, who authorized the official to go abroad for two years, or if they authorized her at all.
Also in the official biography of the minister no Skelet.Org I couldn't find any information about how Grinevich earned her living after leaving the Kyiv City State Administration until 2012.
Lilia Grinevich: A Little Teacher in Big Politics
It is known that Lilia Hrynevych was brought into politics by the current Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Yuriy Lutsenko (more about him - Yuriy Lutsenko. The "Terminator" of Ukrainian PoliticsAfter Viktor Yanukovych came to power, the current minister joined the opposition and actively participated in all its events. For example, on December 3, 2011, a rally entitled "Ukraine against Yanukovych" was held on Mykhailivska Square in Kyiv, organized by the Front for Change, led by Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Hrynevych was also present and actively spoke at the event. However, at that time, her words and those of her allies were at odds with their actions. Opposition figures, including Hrynevych, had promised Ukrainians for several years that they would form a democratic majority in parliament and prevent Yanukovych from ruling Ukraine.
Lilia Hrynevych in opposition
Her active opposition activities allowed Hrynevych to immediately gain close ties with the party leader, and she became Yatsenyuk's advisor on education. However, it was Yulia Tymoshenko who first brought Hrynevych into parliament. Thus, in 2012, Hrynevych entered the Rada as the 14th candidate on the Batkivshchyna party list. After becoming a parliamentarian, Hrynevych chaired the Committee on Science and Education. At that time, Hrynevych was already a doctoral student at the Institute of Pedagogical and Adult Education of the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine.
While the Minister of Education and Science Dmitry Tabachnik (read the help on it: Dmitry and Mikhail Tabachnik. Brother for brother) was gradually dismantling the education system, while Hrynevich, as head of the Verkhovna Rada's Education and Science Committee, silently watched. Opposition members then asked, "Why was it necessary to head a parliamentary committee and then watch in silence?" Professor Oleh Soskin, director of the Institute for Society Transformation, was one of the first to publicly accuse Hrynevich of inaction. The scholar cited two possible reasons: fear of contradicting Tabachnyk and incompetence. Later, Hrynevich did begin criticizing Tabachnyk, but she did so with extreme caution.
On June 15, 2013, after Yatsenyuk and Tymoshenko's parties announced their merger, Hrynevych was elected as one of the deputy leaders of Batkivshchyna. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, Liliya Mykhailivna again won a seat in the Rada, but on the People's Front list. Just a year later, Tabachnyk's recent opponent was suspected of being friends with the former minister. In October 2014, opposition members accused Hrynevych of lobbying for Tabachnyk's people. The scandal was hushed up.
A new turn in the career ladder awaited Grinevich at the time when her close associate Arseniy Yatsenyuk suffered a complete fiasco, he was dismissed, and the place of prime minister was taken by Vladimir Groysman (information about it: Volodymyr Groysman: Dark Spots in the Biography of the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada). But on April 14, 2016, Lilia Mikhailovna joined the new Cabinet of Ministers and received the minister’s seat.
How plagiarist minister Lilia Hrynevych supports her "clones"
In November 2016, the website "Errors and Falsifications in the Scientific Environment" published evidence that the minister's research was worthless. Hrynevych's dissertation was found to contain numerous citations, even entire paragraphs, from other people's scientific articles. The current minister passed off these other people's research as her own. It turns out that Hrynevych continues to use her old practice of stealing intellectual property. Plagiarism was also discovered in two of the minister's recent articles. The 2015 publications "National Pedagogical Theory on the Development of Education in Ukraine in the Context of European Integration Processes" and "The Concept of 'Education,' 'Educational Development,' and 'Educational Policy' in Modern Scientific Discourse" turned out to be compilations of other people's work—completely mindless compilations, in fact, as Hrynevych copied not only other people's ideas but even their mistakes.
After the revelation, Liliya Mikhailovna herself didn't even deny the fact of "borrowing" in the articles, citing that she wrote them "in a hurry," during breaks between legislative drafting sessions. Nevertheless, the minister insists that her dissertation was checked for plagiarism in 2005, and the result was negative.
Most interestingly, Grinevich didn't even apologize to the authors of the stolen works, but merely publicly promised not to use the stolen works in her future academic work. And, to at least somewhat clear her reputation, Grinevich immediately accused former Minister Dmitry Tabachnik of conspiring against certain people.
Notably, soon after, under Hrynevych's leadership, the Ministry of Education drafted a motion requesting that the Cabinet of Ministers cancel the procedure for revoking academic degrees, thereby protecting herself from the consequences of the claims. Immediately, to prevent dishonest academics from receiving titles and honors, Hrynevych announced the creation of the National Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, scheduled to begin operations in the fall of 2016.
Nevertheless, Hrynevych did everything possible to prevent the Agency from operating. The minister carries out his subversive activities jointly with Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kyrylenko (read about it in the article Vyacheslav Kirilenko: The Bad Boy in Ukrainian Politics), whose wife, like Grinevich, was also convicted of plagiarism.
Through joint efforts, the allies managed to push Poplavsky's former assistant, Ruslan Gurak, into the Agency. Incidentally, he was also caught plagiarizing. Through him, Grinevich and Kirilenko are actively blocking the newly created structure.
As a result, the Agency never began its work in the fall of 2016. On New Year's Eve, its chairman, Sergei Khrapatiy, publicly accused the Minister of Education and Science of deliberately blocking the agency's work. Grinevich herself claims that the Agency was seized by Tabachnyk's people and therefore cannot function.
Meanwhile, taking advantage of the situation, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine is issuing orders handing out titles to university employees convicted of plagiarism. For example, on November 18, 2016, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine issued orders to award a PhD diploma to R. Romak, a doctoral candidate at Odessa National Medical University (ONMU). The Odesa student's dissertation was riddled with serious errors, lacking not only scientific novelty and practical significance, but also common sense. Nevertheless, according to Svetlana Arbuzova, Deputy Chair of the Expert Council for Dissertation Review in Preventive, Medical-Biological, and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine, the dissertation was successfully defended at a meeting of the specialized academic council at ONMU, although none of its members held a PhD in genetics.
The board meeting, personally chaired by Lilia Hrynevych, concluded with the award of a Doctor of Medical Sciences degree to E. Glazkov, Rector of Luhansk Medical University. This was despite the fact that he had been publicly accused of plagiarism. On December 13, 2016, the board approved I. Korobko's candidate's dissertation from Luhansk Medical University. As Arbuzova noted, this too is a clear case of falsification. MOUN documents indicate that Korobko successfully completed his postgraduate studies, but according to Skelet.Org He never studied there, and, furthermore, his dissertation work doesn't correspond to the stated discipline. These facts are just a few examples of Grinevich's assistance in obtaining undeserved titles.
To be continued ...
Valeria Romanova, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Liliya Grinevich: The Story of an Illiterate but Armed Minister. Part 2
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