It’s not even stagnation in culture, but real estate – 2

CULTURAL LAYER

Previously, plants and factories were seized. The new fashion is more elegant: the owner is changed by cultural real estate - theaters, cinemas, educational institutions. The new owners are moving the "culture" somewhere far away, and the historic buildings in the city center...

Previously, plants and factories were seized. The new fashion is more elegant: the owner is changed by cultural real estate - theaters, cinemas, educational institutions. The new owners are moving the "culture" somewhere far away, and the historic buildings in the city center are being resold and rented out.

Novaya has already written this year about the seizure of Moscow's cultural treasures (No. 27, "In culture, not even stagnation, but real estate"). Now we put another black dot on the map - the city of Yekaterinburg.

Black raiding - the process of legal and not very change of ownership of real estate - has developed here since about the fall of 2004. At this time, Tatyana Lvovna Kolesnikova, who previously oversaw work with the media in the city administration and headed the newspaper Uralsky Rabochiy, became the head of the city’s culture department. The first after her arrival, the city lost the director and chief director of the puppet theater. After an unexpected change of director Rimma Arkhangelskaya, the actors went on strike, and then the actors were brought payrolls and showed how different salaries everyone had. Disputes began, and director Alexander Borok left himself. Nikolai Vladychkin, the director of the most successful Salyut cinema in the city, was retired, and under him, Salyut made the largest part of the profits of municipal cinemas thanks to Vladychkin’s strategy. In his place was appointed a young employee from the mayor's office.

The Union of Writers fought to no avail with a businessman who bought the first floor of a monument of architecture of the 19th century (Pushkinskaya, 12), the house was closed for repairs for three years, and it is not clear where the writers will be resettled, and whether they will return at all is a question.

The building of the Men's Choral Lyceum on Lenina, 13, located next to the Central Internal Affairs Directorate and the city administration, according to rumors that tend to come true, was looked after by the son of the mayor of Yekaterinburg Arkady Chernetsky. The building of the former Museum of Youth at Liebknecht, 37, where Boris Yeltsin and Andrei Sakharov visited, and Gennady Burbulis began his political career, they say, they plan to convert it into a restaurant. The building is privately owned. The museum is a municipal one. In order to save the museum, the mayor had to transfer the building from private property to municipal property, having agreed with the owners. A proposal for an exchange arose: the owner of the building, the Uspensky trading house, is given a land allotment on favorable terms, and the disputed object is returned to the city. As a result, the land was received, but the house was not given.

The situation with the Kolyada Theater is sluggish (No. 24 for 2006, No. 93 for 2005). The theater must either be left alone in the basement repaired and glorified by the theater at Lenina 69/10, or transported with respect to a dry place (the theater is very damp); both the city authorities and the regional authorities say: “Yes, yes,” but nothing happens.

All the buildings in question are located in the center of Yekaterinburg and have architectural and historical value. All cultural institutions that have been raided by the Department of Culture are bright, accomplished teams that have brought fame to Yekaterinburg and the entire Ural region.

Youth Museum. Karl Liebknecht, 37

Marina ROMANOVA, currently a freelance journalist, 10 years as head of the department of humanitarian problems at Regional Newspaper (Yekaterinburg), six years as editor of the culture department at Expert-Ural, and three years as press secretary of the Yekaterinburg Department of Culture:

- In Yekaterinburg and the Sverdlovsk region, a kind of relationship between culture and power has developed. The achievements that are taking place mostly occur without the participation of the authorities. Neighbors have their own peculiarities: in Perm, the policy of building a new image of the region at the expense of local cultural brands — Perm sculpture and Perm ballet — is now relevant, the other is not in favor. In Chelyabinsk, cultural institutions are perceived as something at home.

In the late 90s, I worked as a press secretary in the Yekaterinburg City Department of Culture. The policy of the then head of the department, Valery Plotnikov, was this: to keep what we have. The new was no longer taken under guardianship, but it was not destroyed either. Now I understand especially well that this approach is favorable for culture: to support the existing, not to interfere with the new. The changed cultural power went the other way. It has already been marked by the fact that there are fewer cultural institutions in Yekaterinburg: there is no Museum of Youth.

The history of the museum began a long time ago. A beautiful old building in the city center was claimed by the Russian Youth Union, the reincarnation of the Komsomol in its modern version. RSM managed to get a document on the ownership of the building, then the owner changed, one of the last was the Uspensky trading house. The owner demanded to vacate the premises or set a rent twice the annual museum budget. Litigation lasted for several years, but they did not touch on the most controversial issue: the authenticity of the property document.

On February 1, 2006, the museum was closed. It was destroyed without being destroyed. They transferred it as one of the departments to the Museum of the History of the City, they were just finishing the reconstruction, there is an external logic. But a museum, in addition to “storage units”, is an exposition, a team, and a building. The three components are no more. And funds, of course, can be stored in a neighboring building. Only this is no longer the Museum of Youth.

This is how the policy of the vertical came to the sphere of culture, when everything had to be arranged according to the ranking, placed in a chain. Now leaders are honored not by those who root for culture with their souls, but by those who think “in a modern way”, that is, from a financial point of view. Leaders of just this type came to the leadership of the city departments of education and culture.

Male choral lyceum. Lenina, 13

Svetlana PIMENOVA, Deputy Director for Educational Work of the Men's Choir Lyceum in Yekaterinburg:

- According to the 131st law, which came into force on January 1, 2006, secondary professional institutions must be transferred to the jurisdiction of the subject of the Federation, along with the building and all the property that is located in them. But the local department of culture does not want to part with the building, making various attempts to leave the lyceum on the balance sheet of the city.

In June 2005, without informing the director, parents, the culture department decided to reorganize the lyceum into a school. From January 1, we are going through all the documents as a comprehensive school. This means that all the musical education received by the students is crossed out, it is transferred to the rank of additional education, and besides, it becomes paid.

Having met with a strong protest from the parents, the Department of Culture decided to change the sign and transform us into an academy by merging the Mussorgsky Music Lyceum and our lyceum into an academy (institute). When entering this “institute”, children do not need to take advanced training programs in the areas of vocal art, choral conducting, and instrumental performance that exist now.

Enrollment has already been announced for the "institute", but there is no license, no documents, and it takes not a month, not two, to create a university. Nevertheless, the authorities tell the Yekaterinburg media how good they are. They do not tell us that according to the documents in the project submitted to us for review, the legal address of the new academy is Anton Valek, 25. Our address, Lenina, 13, does not appear anywhere. The building is vacated.

The region issued a resolution on taking us on its balance sheet. The city, in response to this, issued its decree, dated earlier, under which it tried to impose orders on director Sergei Pimenov, which he is not obliged to fulfill according to his legal position - to make changes to the register that we are becoming an institution. This is the business of the founder, who decided to shift this concern to the artistic director, so as not to be responsible for anything.

We are told: "You are our pride, we will not give you to anyone." We say: so you are destroying us, we are not leaving anywhere. Parents do not care what piece of paper is in the official's desk, who owns the building, as long as the child graduates from the educational institution that he entered.

Tatyana Lvovna Kolesnikova declares that presidential decrees are not written for all municipalities, maybe for someone, yes, but in Yekaterinburg there is a wealthy municipality, it makes decisions on its own. This was stated to the parents, they can confirm this. Kolesnikova's assistant, Irina Vladimirovna Davydova, said: “Lyceum is like a cell phone. How can I get my phone out of my pocket and give it to you? This was said in the presence of teachers.

On June 5, officials from the city's cultural department attempted to seize power by force. There was a planning meeting, we sat and discussed plans for the future, Sergey Yuryevich was drafting the state program for the next year. Tatyana Lvovna Kolesnikova, her deputies Smirnova and Davydova, Alexander Poniatovsky, a lawyer at the cultural department, and Anastasia Semyonova, the new director of the lyceum, came to the meeting. They stopped the planning meeting, took the keys, seals, examination materials, certificates from Sergei Yuryevich, showed the order of June 5, 2006 on the dismissal of Sergei Pimenov from the post of director of the lyceum. They expelled him from the office, which is a direct violation of labor laws: the day of dismissal is considered the last working day, and he has the right to work until the end of the working day. Tatyana Lvovna stated in plain text: since the authority of Sergei Pimenov in the city and in the lyceum is indisputable, we have no other choice, we terminate the contract with him.

The lyceum has letters asking for support from Galina Vishnevskaya, Yuri Bashmet, Iosif Kobzon, Vladimir Spivakov. On the latest album "CHAIFA" "On Myself" the songs "White Bird" and "Otherwise" Shakhrin is helped to sing by the concert choir of boys and youths "Men's Choir Lyceum". At the time of the release of the issue, the parents of the lyceum students prepared a letter to the governor of the Sverdlovsk region, Eduard Rossel, and the chairman of the government of the Sverdlovsk region, Alexei Vorobyov, with a request for temporary management of the lyceum.

Tatyana Lvovna Kolesnikova declined to comment in a conversation on a mobile phone. She responded positively to the offer to meet in Yekaterinburg at the end of June, but remembered that at that time she would leave the city on a week-long business trip.

Red lane, 8a

Lev SHULMAN, head of the Yekaterinburg Center for Contemporary Art:

- The rent for the basement in the dormitory of the flour mill, where the ETsSI and the dance school are located, is 30 thousand rubles. This is not much: if you give it to merchants, they will be happy. Our monthly budget is the same 30 thousand rubles. All that is needed for the survival of the ECCA is the decision of the head of the city to recognize the ECCA as an object of obvious social significance (the center has held several dozen festivals over the past ten years, attracted foreign investments to the city budget for more than a million dollars, Lev Shulman is the founder of the Provincial Dances "and the Faculty of Modern Dance. According to our sources, the city prosecutor's office was recently recognized as an object of social significance by the city committee on property - it still did not pay. - E.V.).

Commentary by yet an observer

Oleg LOEVSKY, deputy director of the Yekaterinburg Youth Theater for creative issues, organizer of the Real Theater festival:

- The basic law of an official in Yekaterinburg, Moscow, London, New York: to be quiet. The second law of an official: when it's not quiet, you need to make it quiet, without delving into why it was not quiet.

They have their own priorities. Day of the city. Ball of the mayor or governor. Maybe an ice town, a New Year's campaign. They are responsible for the leisure of their superiors and a little for the leisure of the townspeople. The Department of Culture is such a leisure center.

Now they have more work to do - they have to work with financial structures, distribute tenders. New words appeared in their vocabulary: “reorganize”, “dump assets”, “minimize”.

This is a new aspect, and so - everything is the same.

A certain degree of voluntarism is present everywhere: "I want it this way, I see it this way." There was a man who used to be a trumpeter in an orchestra, so he sees the world through a pipe, although he is already an official.

Our city is absolutely unique. I was born here and I know a lot about it. I have my own doctrine about the uniqueness of Sverdlovsk/Yekaterinburg. Only in my generation (10 years older than me and 12 years younger) how many talents went from Yekaterinburg to Russia alone. Rock-n-rollers: Butusov, Nastya Poleva, Urfin Juice, Yegor Belkin, ChaiF, Agatha Christie. Filmmakers: Lekha Balabanov, Volodya Khotinenko, Nadya Kozhushanaya, God rest her soul. Theater directors: Tolya Praudin, Grisha Dityatkovsky started here. Modern dance: from and to. Young playwrights: Vasya Sigarev, Oleg Bogaev, Presnyakov brothers. Philosophical Circles: Prof. Sachs, Prof. Brandt.

The city is so big and so culturally supported from the inside that no officials will ever spoil this environment.

This city is unique - the balance of internal forces and slow time. It accumulates here - and then rolls out to Moscow and further. And here it is born again.

Vladimir Bykodorov, director of the destroyed Ural Museum of Youth, said the same thing: “Everything has its own meaning. There will be no Youth Museum, but there will be something else. Culture is a substance so tenacious that it breaks through reinforced concrete.”

But now there, apparently, will be a restaurant.