Awaiting restitution

Museum workers object to ill-conceived bill

A few days after a tense meeting of the presidium of the Union of Museums of Russia, dedicated to the discussion of the bill “On the transfer of state or municipal property of religious significance to religious organizations,” where representatives of about fifty Russian museums sharply spoke out against its current version, a new discussion took place. The round table, held at the Rosbalt news agency, was attended by representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, heads of St. Petersburg museums, and members of the Union of Museums of Russia.

According to the director of the state museum-monument “St. Isaac’s Cathedral” Nikolai Burov, the bill prepared by the Ministry of Economic Development and already sent to several regions is still very crude and in this form should not get into the State Duma without a long discussion. Burov believes that the bill now indicates that the ministry simply wants to relieve the state of caring for former church buildings, many of which are in a deplorable state. The director of the State Museum of the History of Religion, Boris Arakcheev, expressed concern that the law could be used in a “Soviet” spirit: exhibits would be taken away from museums, just as the Soviet government robbed churches in its time. At the same time, Arakcheev considered it necessary to emphasize: many hierarchs and priests understand perfectly well that the church and museums are to some extent engaged in a common cause, that the values ​​stored in museums and used in worship belong to a single culture, and that the higher the cultural level of society, the better it will be for everyone. His museum has so far not had any conflicts with the church, and in recent years many things have been transferred from the funds to various churches.

A member of the presidium of the Union of Museums of Russia, Ivan Korneev, spoke about the negative experience of interaction between museums and the church. For example, when the Ryazan Kremlin Museum-Reserve was removed from the Kremlin territory, the former museum buildings were transferred to the local diocese, which created serious problems. The fate of the museum, located in the Ipatiev Monastery (near Kostroma), was sad: the monastery was returned to the church, and all museum funds were urgently removed from there. A presidential grant was allocated for the construction of a storage facility, where the exhibition was supposed to be located, but for four years the storage facility was never built, and the work of the museum was paralyzed. A difficult situation has developed in the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve: 18 churches there have already been transferred to the church, the church demands that others be transferred to it, but refuses dilapidated and crumbling buildings, insistently laying claim to those that have already been restored. Meanwhile, the state, having transferred the property to the church, continues to spend huge sums on its maintenance.

Here Korneev referred to the recent speech by the head of Rosokhrankultura, Andrei Kibovsky, at the presidium of the Union of Museums of Russia, according to which four times more money is now spent on monuments of church origin than on secular ones. “At the same time, the church does not report to anyone about the expenditure of allocated funds,” Korneev continued. -- If the director of a museum is obliged to hold tenders, competitions, and prepare volumes of reports, then what is happening in the church remains unknown. It seems to me that if the law is prepared by civil servants, they should first of all take care of the interests of the state. In fact, a law is being prepared according to which a significant part of state property is supposed to be transferred to a public organization, which is now the church.”

Deputy Director of the State Museum of History of St. Petersburg Yulia Demidenko spoke about real cases when the museum transferred some items to the church for temporary storage, and they disappeared. A compensation option was found, but the exhibits themselves are still missing. And if the project proposed by the Ministry of Economic Development becomes law in the form in which it is currently wandering through the offices of the heads of several regions, any museum risks losing up to 80% of its funds.

Museum workers seriously fear that the church will not be able to preserve cultural treasures that require certain conditions of maintenance and need restoration. This threatens the very existence of many cultural values, some of which have global artistic significance.

If museum workers are mainly opposed to the bill in its current form, then representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church have their own arguments in its favor. For example, Father Alexander Bertash, a member of the commission on architectural and artistic issues of the St. Petersburg diocese, claims that now museums have problems with exhibiting; much of what is stored in museum funds is not available to visitors. Often, utensils of artistic value, having returned to the church, become more accessible to the public - anyone, regardless of religion, can go to an Orthodox church in order, in particular, to get acquainted with the treasures of Russian culture. However, he also admitted that the church does not yet have the conditions for the full preservation of the relics.

Those gathered complained that the working group for the preparation and discussion of the new bill, which involves fundamental changes in the life of Russian museums, did not include any of the authoritative museum workers. Representatives of the St. Petersburg diocese reported that they were also not invited to participate. “It’s a pity that the law was prepared behind the scenes,” Boris Arakcheev summed up the discussion. - Now it has been quietly launched in the regions, hoping to receive approval from their governors, but the project needs serious elaboration. There, of course, we are mainly talking about real estate, but there is also an item that is very alarming for museums - movable property. In order to determine what is cultural heritage, whose place is in museum collections, and what can be safely transferred to the church, it is necessary to involve the museum community and listen to the opinions of authoritative experts. But before we talk about returning the church’s property, we need to understand the value of every item stored in the museum.”

Natalya SHKURENOK, St. Petersburg