The director of the Ryazan Kremlin was fired for her unwillingness to negotiate with the diocese

On December 10, the head of the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography, Mikhail Shvydkoy, fired the director of the Ryazan Kremlin historical and architectural museum-reserve, Lyudmila Maksimova, due to an unresolved property dispute with the Ryazan diocese.

“Yesterday I was forced to fire the director of the Ryazan Museum, because not looking for a compromise is the wrong way,” M. Shvydkoy said at a press conference on December 11.

“The task of a good leader is to bring to a compromise any contradictions that arise. <...> In relations between the bodies of secular culture and the Russian Orthodox Church, any conflicts must be avoided, since all of them in any case will be very bad for society,” the official believes.

In his opinion, “all leaders of secular cultural monuments must find a common language with church hierarchs.” In 2005, a similar conflict between the management of the Ipatiev Monastery Museum in Kostroma and the local diocese “could have been resolved less painfully if the then director of the museum had negotiated with the Church.”

M. Shvydkoy recalled that Roskultura and the Moscow Patriarchate jointly developed a concept according to which temple buildings located on the territory of museums are transferred to the church, and secular buildings to the state.

Let us remind you that the conflict between the Ryazan diocese and the museum-reserve has been going on since 2005.

On December 13 , Portal-Credo.ru published the decision of the museum’s academic council taken the day before. The document emphasizes that M. Shvydkoy’s statement about the inability of the dismissed director to make compromises “directly contradicts the facts.” “It was L.D. Maksimova, a holder of the church order of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Princess Olga, III degree, who signed documents on the transfer to joint use and under the jurisdiction of the Ryazan diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church of the overwhelming majority of temple buildings on the territory of the Ryazan Kremlin,” museum workers remind. “If this is not a compromise , then it is not clear what Mr. M.E. Shvydkoy means by this.”

“In the current situation,” the council’s decision says, “we have to talk not only about an attempt to actually abolish a specific cultural institution, but about the ongoing privatization of the domestic cultural heritage, about the desire to privatize the rights to the very concept of Russian culture.

The question is inevitable. Are officials, obliged by duty to preserve the cultural and historical heritage of the country, ready to neglect these duties in relation to the Ryazan Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve? Are the authorities ready to ignore more than 26 thousand signatures of Russian citizens who spoke out in favor of preserving the state museum complex in the Ryazan Kremlin? The answer, unfortunately, is obvious. We are ready to neglect and ignore.”

Museum workers say:

"1. We express our deep gratitude to L.D. Maksimova for her unique contribution to Ryazan culture and museum affairs.

1. We express our full support for the civil and professional position of L.D. Maksimova, all her actions in the conflict between Archbishop Paul and the Ryazan Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve.

2. We nominate L.D. Maksimova for the title "honorary citizen of Ryazan".

3. We express no confidence in the leadership of the Federal Agency "Roskultura" and personally in Mr. M.E. Shvydkoy.

4. We condemn the raider campaign of the Ryazan diocese against the Federal State Institution RIAMZ. We believe that the activities of Archbishop Pavel of Ryazan and Kasimov are destructive in relation to Ryazan culture.

5. We bring to the attention of the executive and legislative authorities that by circumventing the current legislation of the Russian Federation, taking a position of completely indulging the raider appetites of the Ryazan diocese in relation to the Federal State Institution RIAMZ, they take on a heavy responsibility before culture.

6. We recommend that the media objectively cover the factual and legal aspects of the conflict between the Ryazan diocese and the Federal State Institution RIAMZ.

7. We call on political parties, social movements and organizations, all Ryazan citizens to actively speak out in defense of FGUK RIAMZ.

8. We believe that holding a meeting at the Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications on December 18, 2007 on the issue of transferring the ensemble of the Ryazan Kremlin to the Orthodox Church without the participation of employees of the FGUK RIAMZ, representing the current staff of the museum-reserve, as well as without the participation of representatives of the Academic Council of the FGUK RIAMZ is unacceptable.

9. We appeal to the Department of Culture and Mass Communications of the Ryazan Region with a proposal to hold a meeting of the broad cultural and museum community of the Ryazan Region on the issue of the fate of the Ryazan Kremlin."

On December 13, the Ryazan City Council decided to transfer into federal ownership the buildings located at st. Lenina, 35 and st. Radishcheva, 28. These premises are expected to be transferred to the operational management of the Ryazan Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve after it is evicted from the Kremlin.

On December 18, the staff of the museum-reserve addressed an open letter to the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation V. Zubkov.

"The head of the Accounts Chamber S.V. Stepashin sent you a letter dated November 22, 2007 No. 01-1729/12-02 with information about the results of an inspection of the Ryazan Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve. We would like to inform you that the contents of the letter are in no way "To the extent it does not correspond to the official Act on the results of the audit dated August 30, 2007, provided by the Commission of the Accounts Chamber to the museum administration, the letter is absolutely lobbying in nature and is a clear example of the raider struggle for the Ryazan Kremlin by the manager of the Ryazan diocese, Pavel (Ponomarev) and the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church as a whole." , - says the document signed on behalf of the team by the deputy director of the museum-reserve for science, Irina Kusova.

“In a situation where we are talking about the intention to actually liquidate the Ryazan Kremlin museum-reserve, setting up in its place a public diocesan museum (based on state collections - a violation of Federal Law No. 54 On the Museum Fund) and a local history museum in a building that was transferred in violation of the laws by the city council of Ryazan from municipal property to federal property, in this situation the museum staff insists that the Government of the Russian Federation fulfill its obligations to provide conditions for the preservation and continuation of the activities of the federal museum-reserve - a particularly valuable object of cultural heritage of the peoples of the Russian Federation,” the letter says.

According to the news agency 7 Novosti , a meeting scheduled for December 18 at the Ministry of Culture, where the issue of transferring the Ryazan Kremlin to the diocese was to be discussed, has been postponed indefinitely.

Sources

• The director of the Ryazan Kremlin lost her job due to her unwillingness to resolve the conflict over the transfer of church buildings // Interfax-religion. 2007. December 11.
• DOCUMENT: Decision of the Academic Council of the Ryazan Kremlin Museum-Reserve regarding the raider campaign of the diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church MP, supported by M. Shvydkiy // Portal-Credo.ru. 2007. December 13.
• The Ryazan Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve will be located in the city administration building // IA 7 news. 2007. December 13.
• The team of the Ryazan Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve addressed an open letter to the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation V. A. Zubkov // Ibid. December 18.
• The meeting in the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation on the transfer of monuments of the Ryazan Kremlin to the jurisdiction of the local diocese was postponed indefinitely // Ibid.