Isaac: a blow to reputation

We are publishing a commentary by Ksenia Sergazina, associate professor at the Educational and Scientific Center for the Study of Religions of the Russian State University for the Humanities and an expert at the SOVA Center, dedicated to the transfer of the building of St. Isaac's Cathedral to the St. Petersburg Diocese.

At the beginning of January 2017, it became known that St. Isaac's Cathedral would be transferred to the Church. According to the governor of St. Petersburg, he made this decision after a December meeting with Patriarch Kirill. It seems that no one is going to talk publicly about what kind of agreements were reached. Dmitry Peskov, the president's press secretary, refuses to comment on Isaak's program, assuring journalists that only Georgy Poltavchenko is responsible for this decision. And we can only guess.

St. Isaac's Cathedral is, of course, not the only monument that the cultural community would not want to give to the Church. It was a pity for the Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma (the decision to transfer it to the Kostroma diocese was made in 2004, and the updated museum, which included the items that were exhibited in the monastery, was opened only in 2016 - 12 years later), and the Novodevichy (on the territory of which is now impossible even to enter during non-liturgical times - and yet it was a favorite place for walks of Muscovites), and the Ryazan Kremlin (the Ryazan collection of ancient Russian art, which is still part of the museum fund, although it is located in buildings transferred to the church, is now impossible to see, because catching the keymaster after the liturgy is a separate and very difficult task, which ordinary tourists are not able to solve).

And we’re not even talking about changing the usual status of these monuments - not just about the fact that you won’t be able to walk around Novodevichy Garden anymore. Rather, it is about distrust of the Church as a structure. Large, closed to outside observers, with non-transparent income and reporting. Which, moreover, is somehow indecent to sue.

For example, they gave the Toropetsk icon from the Russian Museum to a church near Moscow for six months, and on it, asrestorers write , during this time a “bed” formed - “a state of preservation of the author’s layer in which the paint layer rises and hard or less hard ridges." And who is responsible for this is unclear. The museum that donated the icon? The rector of the temple who received her? The businessman who provided the transfer process? Who was supposed to answer according to the law for damaging a work of art - a national treasure, by the way? Dont clear. Which means you can close your eyes to this...

At the same time, there are other precedents, other examples of successful cooperation between the Church and the museum community. Let's say, in Yaroslavl. The Tolga icon, remaining an object of the state museum fund, is kept in the Tolga monastery, but is kept in a special armored icon case and under double guardianship - the police and the local, monastic, “guardian of the shrine.” And the museum has not only a special employee who checks its safety, but also a special visiting restoration commission. The keys to the icon case are also kept in the museum - they are not in the temple. But the museum does not pretend to gain weight. We agreed amicably.

Will there be such a commission in Isaac? Who will check the condition of the frescoes, mosaics, who will restore the stone? These questions have not yet been raised, although we all have the right to receive answers to them even before the official transfer of the cathedral to the diocese. And it’s not even about money (although it’s about that too, yes), but first of all – about professionalism. Does the diocese have its own restorers, and are they sufficiently qualified? Is the diocese ready to hire outside professionals? With the current tendency of the Russian Orthodox Church to build a “parallel world” - with its Orthodox doctors, higher educational institutions and academic degrees in theology, with its literature and its art, with the advice of confessors to get a job only with Orthodox employers - the answer is not obvious. But this creates additional concern for the cultural community.

As a result, we do not know whether tourists will be provided with access to the cathedral during non-liturgical times, whether the colonnade will be preserved, whether the interior of the cathedral will suffer over time, and if it does, who will be held responsible for it.

City residents are also concerned about the issue of financing. In 2015, the city governor said unequivocally that maintaining Isaac was very burdensome for the city during a crisis. Actually, this then became the main argument in the refusal to transfer the cathedral to the Church.

Now the museum-monument "St. Isaac's Cathedral" - a cultural institution that united the Cathedral of the Savior on Spilled Blood and St. Isaac's Cathedral - is completely self-sufficient. The museum’s income allows it to pay 400 employees, have an excellent professional choir, carry out restoration work and, of course, pay all – considerable – utility costs. It is unclear who will bear all these expenses when the cathedral ceases to be a museum. Not a single benefactor has yet declared their willingness to finance the city's largest cathedral.

The media write that the museum will remain, or rather, the entrance fee for entering the cathedral will remain. This, by the way, was the case at the very beginning in the Ipatiev Monastery - for some time the museum cash desk was divided in half - the diocese and the museum staff. But in Kostroma they still took money for entry to the church museum, and not to the existing temple.

In general, questions remain. If they take money, will there be official tickets (with a tax deduction to the city budget) or will only “recommended donation amounts” remain? Who will manage this money? Will a fund for St. Isaac's Cathedral be created and who will go there? Let's say, will the current director of the museum, Nikolai Burov, be able to enter there?

Approximately the same questions were recently asked to a lawyer of the Moscow Patriarchate. She even allows for the preservation of a state museum inside the cathedral handed over to the Church, but she also talks about a church museum. He speaks so vaguely that it becomes clear that there are no answers to this question in the Church yet. Answering the question about the financing of the building, Abbess Ksenia (Chernega) is more specific: the maintenance of the building will be carried out through subsidies, for example, within the framework of the state program “Culture of Russia” - it is not for nothing that the building is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Professional museum workers are also concerned about another problem - in addition to the safety of objects of the state museum fund (not only the iconostasis, but also collections, of which there are many in the basements of St. Isaac's since the Second World War). Where will the current museum employees go – 400 professionals, many of whom have worked in Isaac’s for half their lives?

And I still can’t answer the question, why is the Church going to such reputational losses? Why raise the issue of transferring the building until there is a clear plan for the development of the cathedral, until a fund is created that can control financial flows, until we are all made to understand that in 150 years it will be possible to conduct excursions and tours in the cathedral worship... On the surface there is only financial interest and power. And until the position of the patriarch is clearly expressed, we will only have to guess what came first. Is it really true that Isaac is just a cake for the anniversary of His Holiness?