| Spiritual intrigues and material values It’s better not to start a conversation about the problems of Russian cultural tourism at all - no matter what area you take, it’s the same everywhere: our country is rich in history, culture, and natural landscapes, and the people are such that you can write a novel about everyone, but don’t This material somehow fails to be accessible to general curiosity. No resources, no skills, no desire. There is not enough money either. And only rare enthusiasts prove that if there was a hunt, both this, that, and the third would arise. And even the fourth. It’s not that manna rains down from the sky, but some kind of oasis still appears in the reserved sea of savagery. Journalist Natalya SHKURENOK became acquainted with the traditional state of affairs, this time in the Russian North.
"Lenin is not a fountain"
If on the way from Arkhangelsk airport to the city you do not fall into a cloud of stinking emissions from the local pulp and paper mill, consider yourself very lucky. We, a group of journalists who came to Arkhangelsk at the invitation of the Nordic Journalism Center Barents Press, were not among the lucky ones: during our three days in Arkhangelsk, a sickening sweetish smell followed us everywhere. As well as the thought of the injustice of historical fate, which pushed this once almost European city, which had more trade and cultural ties with Holland and England than with Moscow, to the very outskirts of the Russian province.
The seminar, to which Barents Press journalists were invited, was called “Culture is our common heritage, protection of cultural heritage.” This is especially true in Arkhangelsk: the historical appearance of the city has been largely lost. Once upon a time, the city was all wooden, like a large village, only a dozen churches were made of stone, including a Lutheran church in the former German settlement, which is still preserved. The ancient layout of the city has also been preserved: avenues run parallel to the bank of the Northern Dvina, they are completed by bypass canals, and they are crossed by streets, at the beginning of which, at the corner from the embankment, there were always churches. Now out of 30 temples that stood on the embankment, only three remain.
There are many more wooden houses in Arkhangelsk. But not all of them are architectural monuments: here, even under Soviet rule, wooden housing was built in the old fashioned way. Some of these houses make a very nice impression - tall, strong, spacious. The Department of Culture proposed to collect all the more or less valuable wooden houses on one street and open a museum of urban wooden architecture on it.
The struggle to preserve the historical appearance is expressed in different ways. For example, for the second year now, the Arkhangelsk authorities, together with the local advertising agency Gagarin, have been holding a city social advertising competition. The winning posters are put on public display in a prominent location and remain there until the following year. This time the exhibition was placed on the main avenue, Troitsky, covering a construction fence around a building being repaired with bright shields. One of the posters combines two images - a historical fountain that was destroyed half a century ago, and a monument to Lenin that now stands in this place. And all this is crossed out by the inscription: “Lenin is not a fountain.” There is little hope that the monument will be removed and the fountain restored, but at least on the poster you can see what it looked like.
Architect from Solombala
Arkhangelsk is located not only along the banks of the Northern Dvina, but also on numerous islands - they are called “cats” here. Some cat islands have very funny names, for example - Dunkin Pup. Not far from it is the Woman's Knee: can you imagine how the sailors are having fun, telling how they hung out on the traverse between the Pup and the Knee? There is practically no work on the islands, people leave there to work in Arkhangelsk, but there is not much work there either, so the majority strives for St. Petersburg and Moscow. And numerous graduates of local universities also go to pursue a career away from their hometown.
The most famous, probably, Arkhangelsk island also has a funny name - Solombala. It was here that Peter the Great established the first shipyard back in 1693. Typical English and Dutch manor houses from the 17th-18th centuries still stand on the island. The residents of Arkhangelsk call this island “northern Odessa”, and its inhabitants - “Odessans in felt boots”: Solombalans are enterprising, stubborn and never lose heart. Apples are grown on Solombala! There is nothing like this anywhere else in the vicinity of Arkhangelsk. The Solombalans always decorate all their buildings with carvings: in one courtyard, to my amazement, I saw a doghouse decorated with intricate carvings! Even their boats look their own; from a distance it is noticeable that the boat is coming from Solombala - it is always decorated with a high cabin. And in order to move without interference along the rivers that cut through the island, they even make bridges with a hump in the middle - especially for proud sailors who do not bow their heads to anything.
Arkhangelsk artists come to Solombala for plein air, some even moved here for permanent residence. By the way, they long ago proposed the idea of creating a separate tourist complex on Solombala, where there is not a single modern house yet - “Solombala Village”. The head of the culture department, Shestakov, was very inspired by this idea. True, having become a “former”, I forgot my “old dreams”.
But Solombala cannot be forgotten! If only because there is the most incredible building on the island, you probably won’t find anything like it in all of Russia. The fact is that Nikolai Sutyagin lives here, an extraordinary person in all respects: he, for example, somehow managed to not work for a day under the Soviet regime, he only went to the sabbath. When the cooperative movement began, Sutyagin became the first local entrepreneur and did everything he could. He had a lifelong dream: to build a house from the upper balcony of which the White Sea would be visible - so that he could go out onto this balcony in the morning and drink coffee (a drink familiar to the Solombalans since the 17th century), greeting the sea. And Nikolai began to build a house. Construction continued for many years, and now a wooden palace with a peaked Gothic roof, or rather, with 12 roofs, stands in the middle of Solombala! It is as tall as a good nine-story building, built from the best, eternal wood - larch. About three years ago, Nikolai Sutyagin was convicted of some kind of financial violations, served two years, returned and now lives as a hermit in his phantasmagoric house, does not open the door to guests. Solombala residents treat the building calmly, even without irony - thanks to such a local original, all tourists from Arkhangelsk come to the island: know our Solombala residents. By the way, it would probably be possible to add this house to the list of local attractions and arrange excursions with the owner. But to do this, it would be necessary to take the house itself under protection, and the Arkhangelsk authorities do not even get around to preserving houses that were three hundred years old.
Small Karelians, yes dear
25 kilometers from Arkhangelsk there is a place where, it seems, the dream of any museum worker has come true - Malye Karely, an open-air museum of wooden architecture. It was created in 1973 and since then it has been growing, developing, making plans and implementing its plans. It all started with one small mill, now in Small Karelia there are more than a hundred monuments from almost all regions of the Arkhangelsk region and other regions of the Russian North: four sectors are already open for inspection - Kargopol-Onezhsky, Mezensky, Dvinsky, Pinezhsky; Vazhsky and Pomeranian are preparing.
In the early 90s of the last century, Small Karelians were very lucky: President Boris Yeltsin came here and rode on a large wooden swing - they are now always shown to all visitors as one of the main attractions. And Yeltsin liked it here so much that he soon signed a decree transferring the museum to federal subordination. Now Small Karelians have practically no problems with financing. The problem is different: there are almost no preserved ancient houses left in the villages. There is an idea to recreate buildings from photographs, drawings and drawings. Moreover, construction traditions have not yet been forgotten.
And not only construction ones. For example, there are two villages in the Arkhangelsk region - Koida and Maida, where descendants of Novgorod settlers live. They still preserve ancient community traditions: in Maida there is a veche bell hanging in the middle of the village, and residents decide all serious issues at a general meeting near it. And neither the autocratic tsars nor the Soviet government eradicated this custom.
Most of the buildings in Malye Karely are churches and chapels. Their museum simply saved them from imminent death. Like, for example, one of the first exhibits - a rare bell tower from the village of Kuliga Drakovanov, built at the end of the 16th century: it even has domes in the shape of ancient helmets, not onions. Or - a worship cross from the Dvina village. If it weren’t for the museum, this gigantic cross—eight meters long—would have simply rotted on the road: a local tractor driver, trying to pull his tractor out of the impassable mud, tied it to the cross, and it collapsed. Now the upper, most part of the cross is presented in the interior of the Church of St. George in the Dvinsky sector. This church, by the way, is interesting in that a covered gallery has been built around it so that repentant sinners and non-believers can also watch the service. Such is architectural tolerance.
“Now the most important task of the museum is to saturate it with life,” says Alla Ivanovna Ivanova, a senior researcher at the museum, a specialist in church architecture and interiors. - Firstly, we want to open permanent workshops so that everyone can get acquainted with ancient crafts. Secondly, we hold folk festivals and concerts here. A special topic is the transformation of museum churches into working ones; we have already consecrated one chapel.
—Won’t it happen later that the church will claim its rights to your museum exhibits?
- We have already discussed this issue in the diocese, there are no complaints. There are also reasonable people in the church; they understand perfectly well that otherwise these religious buildings cannot be preserved. And if you present rights, then you have to answer for it - for example, transport them back to the villages. How to do this? And most importantly, why - in some of the villages from where they came to us, there are almost no inhabitants left.
The museum is negotiating with the diocese about the joint use of some religious buildings: the museum restores and preserves them, and the church sends its priests to services on major holidays. Negotiations have been going on for several years, but so far only one building has been dedicated. Small Karelia is gradually acquiring its own living infrastructure, which is facilitated by the tourist complex built nearby with the same name - it receives tourists all year round and offers them any form of modern entertainment.
Nightingales of discord
This is where the issue of the social contract between the museum and the church is really acute, and it is on Solovki. The tug-of-war between the monastery, the Solovetsky Museum and the local authorities continued for more than ten years, the conflict flared up, died down, and began to flare up again. And this continues to this day, despite the fact that last summer the “Agreement on the procedure for organizing excursion services for tourists and pilgrims at historical and cultural monuments...” was signed between the monastery and the museum. In general, we signed a paper in which we clearly defined: who leads groups to what objects, how to fill out applications and vouchers, how to observe monastic etiquette and drive away “wild” tourists and stray single visitors from organized groups.
Now Solovki is visited, according to the calculations of the director of the museum Mikhail Vasilyevich Lopatkin, about 30 thousand people a year: about 20 thousand - with museum tickets, almost 3 thousand - "hares" - free riders, registered pilgrims are 4 thousand, unregistered - about one and a half. And judging by the trend, this number will increase, so there is something to share and something to sort things out over.
According to the director, the museum has achieved great success in recent years: new hotels have been built, since 2000 the museum’s funding has quadrupled - it now receives 95 million rubles a year. True, this is not enough for the director: “If they received 150 million, it would be the average European level.” Although in recent years there have been fewer monastery buildings and structures under the museum's control: out of 117 buildings, 50 were transferred to the church, 59 remained with the museum, and eight were in joint use. Naturally, museum properties are in the best condition, while monastery properties are in worse condition. As Mikhail Vasilyevich explains, the church does not have funds for restoration, repairs or simply maintaining the buildings.
“We offered to transfer several more buildings to the monastery this spring, but he refused,” says the museum director. “Today the church has no funds, and our legislation does not stipulate legal ways of financing museum objects in the hands of the monastery.”
The problems are understandable: if before the closure of the monastery in 1920 it was served by 1,500 monks, today only 40 inhabitants live in it, of which only half are monks. And there is little hope for the local population - only 400 able-bodied Solovki residents, and another 500 dependents - elderly pensioners and children. Of these, only a hundred will be permanent parishioners of Solovetsky churches. So it would seem that the monastery has enough material problems.
“We didn’t give up anything! - the voice of Father Joseph, the abbot of the monastery, is calm, only sparks of indignation flash in his eyes. “It’s not for us to decide what to transfer and what not, but no one offered us anything this spring.” And we carry out the restoration on our own; the museum is not involved in this.”
One of the most pressing issues in Solovki is the creation of a memorial museum for victims of repression. It seems that no one is forgotten and nothing is forgotten; in all the monastery exhibitions there are fragments dedicated to the ELEPHANT. But the monastery is categorically against such a museum being created in one of the temples or monasteries. “We pray daily for all those killed and those who passed through the camps, but I do not agree with the need to place bunks in churches!” - says Father Joseph.
What you really notice right away on the island are the new hotels. Some of them meet all European requirements. The prices are also appropriate: the cost of one bed in the Solovki-Izba hotel (a complex of two-story wooden cottages on the seashore) is $130 per day.
“The business community here on the island is increasingly accepting the local rules of the game,” says Mikhail Lopatkin. — Businessmen understand perfectly well what can be done here and what cannot be done. We, the museum, bring funds here for restoration, and the business serves tourists. And now we are not ashamed to talk about our hotels.”
Thanks to such vigorous business activity of the museum administration, new jobs have appeared on the island - for the local population this is simply salvation; there is especially nowhere to work on Solovki. True, when we met the maids, administrators, and waitresses at the hotel, we learned that almost all of them were from the mainland, not locals. And the business that came to Solovki under Lopatkin is also mostly not local - Moscow, Arkhangelsk. This means that taxes also go from the island to the mainland. And this is very noticeable: the roads on the island are disgusting - local authorities do not have the funds to repair them. Residential buildings are mostly former barracks, only slightly converted. The local hospital looks like it was after an artillery shelling: it’s good that international charitable organizations periodically help doctors - with equipment and medicines.
“Why is no one talking about the fact that local residents are suffering without normal drinking water? - Koore Tanvik, a Norwegian journalist, chairman of the Friends of Solovki society, is indignant. “Everyone talks about tourists and business, but they forget about people!”
In general, the local population found itself out of work while the museum and the monastery divided spheres of influence - spiritual, material. Solovki residents are trying to get out of it as best they can: this year the most popular type of business here is bicycle rental. For an hour - 50 rubles.
“We have to survive somehow,” says Alexander, a local resident. “You can’t make money in the village; salaries are small.” Young people are leaving - who needs them here? Bicycles help me out - they are a very popular means of transportation among tourists. I’ll earn money over the summer, enough until next year.” Natalya SHKURENOK |
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