The victory of the collective farm culture

The largest Russian folklore center was at risk of closing. His archive is taken out, employees were offered to quit

On November 28, the Ministry of Culture, without any approvals and preliminary notification, began to export the huge archive of the State Center for Russian Folklore (GCRF). Soon, about 170,000 unique works of folk art collected on expeditions, the library of the Center and the results of its scientific research will be transferred to the disposal of the House of Folk Art - an organization that has never been involved in scientific activities. Employees of the GCRF claim that recently the director of the Department of state support of art and folk art, Andrei Malyshev, allegedly, allegedly invited them to submit a statement of dismissal of their own free will. At the same time, no written guarantees for employment in a new place were provided.

“In fact, it looks like a raider seizure of a folklore center,” says his leader, a famous musician and folklorist Sergey Starostin. “Without an archive, our activity is impossible, and in the Ministry of Culture they understand this.”

A year earlier, the State Committee for Economics was deprived of a ministry of a legal entity and was given a structure called Roskultproekt. Its main task is to develop a “project of the concept of preservation and updating of intangible cultural heritage in the period until 2030.”

The structure is headed by Oleg Ivanov, who previously held the position of deputy chairman of the Union of Cinematographers of Russia Nikita Mikhalkov and has never been related to the study of the traditional heritage.

The chief accountant of the Center Nadezhda Agafonova in a conversation with the “Novaya” explains the transfer of the Center with the possible desire of some minists of the Ministry of Culture to gain control over the financing of the RGFC. According to her, together with the legal entity of the Roskultproekt center, I got the opportunity to dispose of its budget, staff and property, as well as to receive regular financing of the Ministry of Culture in the form of state assignment to study folklore. After the next portion of the budget for 2017, Roskultproekt received an order from the ministry to change the charter, on the basis of which state buildings came to the center. During the rest of the year, Roskultproekt reduced the funding of the center and fired half of the employees. At the same time, the legal entity and the opportunity to receive money from the Ministry of Culture in the form of state assignments Roskultproekt retained for himself. “It's like dashing nineties. They took and kicked everyone out, ”says Agafonova. In June 2017, the center was transferred from its own premises to the basement of one of the buildings of the Ministry of Culture, where the archive packed in boxes is now stored.

In early November of this year, the employees of the GTSRF became aware that they plan to transfer the remains of the center at the disposal of the House of Folk Art. In the very center and in the folkloristic environment outside, many are sure that this means the actual termination of research and educational programs in the field of folklore. On November 15, a petition appeared on the Change.org website with a request to stop the disbandment of the RGFC - this is how Sergey Starostin interprets the perspective of the merger: “The House of Folk Creativity is engaged in the material support of club formations, that is, macrames, ballroom dancing, and so on. Sometimes with them there are also choirs of folk song, but what they sing and what they dress up in, one god knows. They even have no scientific areas of activity in the charter. To do this, you need to rewrite the charter, change the structure. I have a question for officials: why mix two structures if we do completely different things? ”

The petition of the center is addressed directly to the Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky. When asked about the degree of awareness of the minister about what is happening, Starostin answers as follows: “Medinsky is not obliged to be informed. He has both advisers and the director of units who can popularly explain to him what is happening in their areas. The director of our department Andrei Malyshev is simply incompetent in his question. He believes that this is optimization, the merger of two organizations similar in profile. I understand that ministerial officials do not read petitions, but I think that at the moment it is important that society begins to speak on this topic. ”

It was not possible to get a comment from Malyshev himself, but on November 29, in response to a “New” request in the press service of the Ministry of Culture, they gave a written explanation about the current situation. The transfer of the archive at the disposal of the House of Folk Art in the Ministry is motivated by the fact that it "is in a random state, is not digitized and does not have a normal inventory."

Within the walls of the House of People's Culture, according to the Ministry of the Ministry, the archive will be put on the balance of the state and systematized. “Thus, we will save unique materials,” the press service says. The statement also states that all the employees of the GTSRF received a proposal for the transition to the house of creativity on the previous conditions.

Employees of the Center claim that the archive is actually digitized by 90%, and not everyone received the proposal to transition to the House of Folk Art.

In addition, Starostin believes that the merger, among other things, threatens the center with a loss of name. Over the 26 years of scientific activity, the GTSRF has earned a special reputation not only as a research center, where the All -Russian Congresses of Folklorists took place, but also as an organizer of folklore festivals and open courses of local musical traditions.

“Scientific study of folklore is an extremely important task that should be solved at the state level. The approach to folklore as amateur performances is unacceptable, ”comments on the news about the situation around the center, Maria Nefyodova, the head of one of the oldest and most authoritative Russian folklore groups Dmitry Pokrovsky.

“A wave of interest in folklore went and goes from the city to the village,” says Maria Nefyodova. - And by the way, she helped to raise the self -consciousness of village youth. People in the field began to be interested in and understand folk music. In one of the expeditions in the Kuban, in response to a request to introduce the local performers, they were asked - what are the teams interest you - authentic folklore or "folk"? "

The difference between authentic music and the imitation of the “people's” is not quite obvious to an outside observer is very important for the community of folklorists, although until recently in this environment they were quite calm about such a split. Amateur mugs exist, as it were, in parallel with the world of authentic music, there is no direct competition between them, and different DCs often provide their sites for folklore teams.

The official statement of the press service of the Ministry of Culture contains promises to make such changes to the charter of the House of Folk Art that the scientific activity of the GTSRF continues in the walls of the united structure. However, the final loss of the center of autonomy threatens the blur of the boundaries between amateur circles and professional researchers of folklore, Starostin believes: “After 1917, the task of this holding in the depths of the people appeared. Perhaps the task was not set directly, but throughout the years of the existence of Soviet power, the root peasant culture was replaced by images that could be ordered to the composer, asking to compose "something a la popular." Thus, a whole layer of collective farm culture appeared, which took an authentic place in the villages. The people tried to keep their heritage as he could, and this can be withstanded for one generation or for two, but not a whole century.

All this movement for folklore music began with the fact that researchers and performers in the eighties began to engage in systematic study of what was preserved in the archives. It was then that the intelligentsia had an understanding that there is a difference between the culture of the collective farm and the culture of the village, and how the last is complex and deep. ”

On November 29, the fate of the RGFC was decided in the walls of the Ministry of Culture at a special meeting with the participation of representatives of all interested parties, Sergey Starostin, who again opposed the merger. “During the meeting, a unanimous decision was made to support the actions of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation to unite the Center for Russian Folklore and the House of Folk Art,” the press service said. An employee of the GCRF Varvara Dobrovolskaya, named in the statement by the head of the archive, also spoke for the speedy transfer of the archive, although he actually holds the position of head of the scientific department. At the time of signing the number, the ministry has not yet prepared a document on the basis of the past meeting, and the movement of the RGFC archive began again stopped.

Semyon Sheshenin , for "New"