Instead or together?

The state and the Church agree on joint assistance to culture

At a conference convened by the head of the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography Mikhail Shvydkoy together with the chairman of the Public Chamber commission on the preservation of cultural and spiritual heritage, the head of the affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan of Kaluga and Borovsk Kliment, the sad news was announced: on December 10, the head of the FAKiK, Mr. Shvydkoy, fired Director of the State Museum-Reserve "Ryazan Kremlin" Lyudmila Maksimova. The official wording: “Reluctance to engage in dialogue with confessions.” It was Mrs. Maksimova who established herself as a selfless and principled fighter for the rights of the museum against illegal “church restitution.” Let us recall that in February 2006, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II sent a letter to the president with a proposal to transfer the ensemble of the Ryazan Kremlin to the Russian Orthodox Church due to the religious purpose of all the property. Vladimir Putin agreed, despite the fact that in 1995, by decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 1219, the Ryazan Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve was included in the State Code of Particularly Valuable Objects of the Cultural Heritage of the Peoples of the Russian Federation. According to the fair remark of Doctor of Art History Alexei Lebedev, an active supporter of the protection of museums, in ancient times kremlins performed a variety of administrative, fortification, economic and cultural (including religious) functions. Absolutization of one of them is not correct. The entire city at one time stood up to defend the Ryazan Museum, whose holdings contain about 500 works of ancient Russian painting, including the 13th-century icon “Our Lady Hodegetria,” priceless examples of ancient Russian facial embroidery, and 570 handwritten and early printed book monuments from the 15th to 19th centuries. However, it didn't help. And the fate of the Ryazan Kremlin Museum, as well as the Tobolsk and Solovetsky ones, is now not very clear. They didn’t clarify it at the press conference either. Mikhail Shvydkoy limited himself to speeches about the need for compromise, the skills of subtle diplomacy and the presence of a desire to avoid conflicts. Where the funds will move and who will take care of providing museums with equivalent buildings with acceptable temperature and humidity conditions is an open question.

The Church wants to receive the property that, since the 18th century, was in most cases state-owned, and in the 20th century, thanks to the dedication of museum people, who were again in the service of the state, was restored and preserved. These people have the skills to preserve and care for great works of world culture. The Church has almost no such specialists. And a wise alliance of state and church institutions is, of course, necessary. It’s only strange if it turns into a misalliance, when one side, confident in its infallibility, rigidly dictates terms to those who can help the union be successful professionally. And the state today punishes professionals.

Thank God, the main part of the conference was still held under the motto “Together!” Since 2004, the federal budget has been spending money on design, repair and restoration work on historical and cultural monuments transferred for use to religious organizations (Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, etc.). Cooperation with the Russian Orthodox Church is, of course, the most active. The federal agency performs the functions of a state customer and manages budget funds. If at the beginning of cooperation in 2004, 200 million rubles were spent from the state treasury on the restoration of churches, then 2 billion are expected in 2008. 360 cultural monuments are currently in the restoration process (despite the fact that thousands need restoration).

Bishop Clement assured of good relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state in the good cause of reviving churches. He noted that the Russian Orthodox Church is ready to take another 10 thousand churches that were not transferred to it if the state helps restore them. Over the past 17 years, the Metropolitan noted, the number of operating churches has increased fivefold. Most of them returned in a ruined state. The agency can only help restore those churches that are federally owned. Restoration of “local” monuments is carried out at the expense of other, extra-budgetary funds.

A separate problem is the quality of restoration. Both Bishop Kliment and the head of the Faculty of Culture and Culture noted that the culture of restoring ancient architecture is being lost. The old generation of restorers is leaving. Young people are not interested in doing this. There are many companies on the restoration services market that do not know how to do this. The problem is partly solved by the procedure for acceptance of work by technical supervision. In 2007, on sites transferred to the use of the Russian Orthodox Church, it was carried out by Zintaz LLC (Moscow), and on sites transferred to other faiths by Construction Industry LLC (Moscow). Both companies were identified based on a competition.

Sergei KHACHATUROV