"Forbid a bad past"

The Ministry of Culture and the FSB check the books published by the Hermitage

The senior researcher at the Hermitage, Alexei Larionov, reported on his Facebook page about the work of a certain commission, the result of which was the ban on the publication and distribution of books on the sale of works of art from museum funds in the 20-30s of the twentieth century.

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Experts on the commission in the Hermitage

The post of Alexei Larionov is dedicated to the results of the work of a certain verification commission that came to the Hermitage about two weeks ago. The author of the post is not sure of the origin of this commission: "formally from the Ministry of Culture, but, they say, there were mainly representatives of another department." Be that as it may, when the audit ended, the Hermitage was made a claim that the museum for many years illegally published documents with the Secretary Grif. Alexei Larionov explains: “We are talking about a series of collections on the materials of the Hermitage Archive, for the most part, for the most part, museum sales of the 1920-1930s ... exemplary and very useful books. They are now prohibited from the commission, removed from book kiosks ..., they have not been ordered to refer, and the next, prepared for printing, tomes with documents for printing for printing. 1932-1933 is prohibited from the publication.

There is a full -scale offensive on academic freedom, to freedom of cultural exchange, for freedom of expression of opinions

The Hermitage on his website has already given an official refutation, where the publication of Alexei Larionov is called incorrect and it is said that "there are no official prohibitions on the publication of archival materials stored in the State Hermitage, as there is no solution to a" commission "... The seizure of books from the series of" Pages of History of the Hermitage ". After that, it is reported that in the museum in the museum "Work is underway to improve the archival storage of all documents in accordance with the current legislation ."

The special services come and go, no one remembers them, and there is no more serious popular treasure than the Hermitage in Russia

- Today in Russia there is a full -scale offensive on academic freedom, to the freedom of cultural exchange, to freedom of expression of opinions. And gradually this attack captures such areas that the authorities did not previously interest - for example, archival data on the movement of cultural values. I think that just ordinary employees of the special services had to show that they were doing something. And the Hermitage is such a valuable cultural institution that everything can be found there - including pornography and GOSTain, it is an inexhaustible vessel. Well, here, they scooped up and hooked the disclosure of information - supposedly secret, although it is clear that they are not of interest to anyone other than experts in art history. I think that this is not a rewriting of history, but a banal task is to find something where it is easiest to look for. And also - I think this is a continuation of the attack on the Hermitage, we know a number of plots in the past, when it became the object of interest of law enforcement agencies, recall the plot with the construction of a new storage in the old village - there were also claims, the deputy director was detained. The Hermitage is too free an institution. Maybe all this is due to the position of the director of the Hermitage on the Isaacievsky Cathedral and on other issues. But I believe that the Hermitage wins in this struggle with obviously. The special services come and go, no one remembers them, and there is no more serious popular treasure than the Hermitage in Russia. Oil is getting cheaper or more expensive, and the treasures of the Hermitage are priceless. And no one more cool than Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky in St. Petersburg, this is the most famous Petersburger in the world. If the Hermitage begins to close and destroy, then by and large there will be nothing left. So I am sure that the Hermitage will survive all this - how I survived the bombing in the Great Patriotic War, Stalinist repression and capture by the Bolsheviks in October 1917.

Sergey Golubok

-Alexei Larionov wrote on his Facebook, and the Fontanka then spread that the Hermitage archives regarding the sale of cultural works were taken out somewhere-do you think such actions are legal?

The FSB sees in the archives danger, as in any other sources of knowledge

- Here, legal analysis does not make sense at all, it makes sense when there is a court that considers the dispute. I think here it is necessary not to talk about the legality, but to consider what is happening as a performance, as a confrontation between civilization and art, on the one hand, and ignorance and gross power - on the other. And this abduction of archives can be compared with the plunder, burning, say, the Alexandrian library and the followed by the decline of the Hellenistic culture. And this is not the first time that the FSB is trying to reduce the availability of archives, this is their longtime subject of interest, they see them in danger, as in any other sources of knowledge. Well, this is normal for them. Here is a question in relation to society, which is more important to it - faceless special services or art treasures. The Hermitage will not sue the FSB, this issue will never reach an independent court - I repeat, there is nothing to talk about in the legal plane, it is like suing Kadyrov’s bridge.

- In general, we have a lot of archives in different institutions, there is something to seize.

- Yes, everyone needs to prepare. And we recall that it happened recently in Moscow when he took and burned out - the Institute of Scientific Information on Public Sciences. And now his director, Academician Pivovarov, as you know, are going to judge . And this was the largest archive, including on the history of Russia - and burned down, by the way, under dubious circumstances. The availability and openness of archives is the most important indicator of the openness of society, there is nothing to be surprised.

Daniil Kotsyubinsky

The historian Daniil Kotsyubinsky believes that now we are not enough information to talk about the motives for the prohibition of books on the history of the movement of cultural values, especially considering that they have been published and sold since 2006.

Perhaps this is a clumsy attempt to continue the "anti -corruption" collision on the director of the Hermitage

-These are events of 80 years ago, there is no secret information there and cannot be. The story of how the masterpieces of the Hermitage were sold abroad during the period of industrialization is well known. I do not think that the Ministry of Culture sent FSB employees to clean up some bookstores-the FSB does not obey the Ministry of Culture. Perhaps this is a clumsy attempt to continue the “anti -corruption” attack on the director of the Hermitage Piotrovsky, which began shortly after his statement against the transfer of Isaacia of the Russian Orthodox Church. But again, what is the point of withdrawing books that have been sold for a long time, people have them, in libraries, on the Internet, from where nothing is impossible to remove at all-even the same extremist literature, which, although prohibited, you can find and download it in all search engines. I don’t understand what was in the head of people who gave this order - the motivation is absurd, but of course it is.

- Daniil, this is what Alexei Larionov writes still: “ As far as I know, similar special operations were also held in some Moscow museums, in particular, the MiCU (the State Museum of Fine Arts) named after Pushkin and the Historical Museum. There, they say, it came to the cutting and removal of individual pages from discarded affairs.” This means that it concerns not one Hermitage?

-Yes, if similar things happen in other places, probably this is due not only to the attack on Piotrovsky, but with something else. I do not see any reasonable component here. One thing is clear - we must speak loudly about this, because such actions violate the constitution: they try to hide from us that which is not a state secret, and everything that is not a state secret, we have the right to know. But I do not think that people who make such decisions are mentally inferior-they have some explanation in their heads. If we turn to our prohibitive laws-about the insult of the feelings of believers, about the ban on the mat in the media, then Saltykov-Shchedrin is recalled-"Each person walks dangerously, the incomplete will bring gifts," that is, everyone should walk around the street. But this is not the case, this is an almost secret special operation, and after all, no one justifies the big terror at the top, why now we need to hide the export of values? One of the commentators suggested that some kind of sale was planned again, but it would be strange: now you certainly do not hide anything!

Mikhail Zolotonosov

We could not get comments in the Hermitage. But the historian of art, literary critic, writer Mikhail Zolotonosov has some considerations about the reasons for the “special operation” in the Hermitage. About what was happening in the Hermitage, he personally told him his own source.

The documents are not secret, and to initiate affairs about their publication is absurd - but under totalitarian regime you can do everything

- They told me that at first the commission of the Ministry of Culture worked there, she appeared in the manuscript department - apparently, purposefully, knowing what to look for. The conversation came about documents on sales of the 20-30s, and the department’s employees proudly say to them: here are what we are well done, we all published this. After that, employees of the Ministry of Culture called the FSB - and the story began on the publication of secret documents. Employees of the manuscript department show them: here, the documents do not marry the “secret”, and in general the term of the state is 30 years, and then almost 3 times more time passed. FSB officers say: it does not matter, these are secret documents - and all originals are seized and taken away in an unknown direction. This is a very important point - that the documents are not secret, and to initiate affairs about their publication is absurd - but under totalitarian regime you can do everything. In addition, I think that this story is very symptomatic for the present and for the behavior of the Ministry of Culture, the idea of a fix of which is to prohibit the spread of historical information. To prohibit a bad past, to rewrite, more focusing on mythology, on legends, so that no one doubts the exploits of either Zoe of Cosmodemyanskaya or 28 Panfilovites, which Alexander Krivitsky came up with, which has already been written about a lot. In this regard, the promotion in relation to the Hermitage looks quite natural. No need to write about the fact that there were sales of paintings. I just recently read all these books, checked on the New York Times and other publications - to work on the book that I am writing now. To remove these books from the book fund does not mean to remove from the book fund a mention of this sale. This is pointless - or you need such a totalitarian regime that Orwell described. But the tunity -headed officials from the Ministry of Culture, fulfilling the social order of their minister, continue to make this senseless work, because everyone knows everything: the money for the Hermitage masterpieces helped out a little, but the Minister of Finance Mellon, who was sold, promoted the sale of matches from the USSR to America. And because of these matches, absolute masterpieces were sold, including Rafael, Titian,-this is a shameful page in the museum of the USSR, and it is clear that those who believe that they need to rewrite history tries to pull out this page. It is characteristic that we would not have known anything if the Hermitage employee Larionov did not write about it on Facebook. That is, the Hermitage, subordinate to the Ministry of Culture, hides the shameful, crazy activity of its minister. Now in the Hermitage to no one to achieve intelligible explanations, they have distributed only a press release from which nothing is clear at all. It is clear that the information of Larionov, then widespread by Fontanka, is true: they banned the sale of books, seized and taken the documents. This reminded me of how the researchers used to find documents about the national origin of Lenin in the Central State Historical Archive - that his mother was a Jewish. These documents were seized, dragged to Moscow, then other researchers found them again, they were seized again - and so it was three times. This is an old Soviet tradition, and not Medinsky came up with hiding the past and rewriting it. Books on the sale of values were removed from the Hermitage, now they will be stopped issuing them in a public library, like all books from the federal list of extremist literature. Let's see, not evening yet. The crazy regime, in separate areas, inclined to totalitarianism, can come up with anything. Who knows, maybe a blow to the Hermitage is Piotrovsky’s revenge - for anything. For example, I recall that Medinsky demanded a cabinet in the Hermitage, they wrote about this then: Piotrovsky refused him categorically. Or maybe Medinsky, expecting that he, together with the government, will resign, beaten the wedge under the place of the director of the Hermitage, - we do not know. There are many options - why and why it has been produced.

Crazy regime, in separate areas, inclined to totalitarianism, can come up with anything

In addition, Mikhail Zolotonosov notes that the Hermitage published the first book on the sale of museum values in 2006, and it is very strange that the reaction to this appeared 11 years later. He believes that the action to prohibit these books and withdraw documents is on a par with other scandalous initiatives of the Ministry of Culture, such as the unification of libraries. According to Mikhail Zolotonosov, it would be better if the Ministry of Culture reacted to the Night Banking Corporate Department in the Estamps of the Russian National Library, and did not seize purely scientific little -winged publications necessary for art critics, since the movements of cultural values are the most important subject of their study.