Russian cultural heritage register
[1] Natural landmarks and reserves (apart from cultural landscapes), movable art, archives, museum and library collections are not part of the register and are governed by different laws and agencies.
[2] A different listing, State Code of Particularly Valuable Objects of Cultural Heritage of the Peoples of the Russian Federation,[3] created in 1992, includes the most conspicuous man-made landmarks as well as operating institutions: museums, archives, theatres, universities and academies.
Local heritage registers in the Russian Empire extend to 1805, when Alexander I demanded state protection of archaeological sites on the recently conquered Black Sea coast.
Within the 1830s official and public understanding of "antiquities" was narrowed to Russia's "indigenous" art of pre-petrine periods; baroque and neoclassicism of the 18th century, regarded as recent foreign influence, were exempt.
[11] Professional studies of ancient architecture did not gain momentum until the 1840s, when the country accumulated a critical mass of architects trained in restoration projects in Italy and France at the expense of the Imperial Academy of Arts.
To help formulate the new canon, Grigory Gagarin (vice-president of the Archaeological Society) instituted a special commission for "the studies of Russian and Orthodox in general, monuments of the Western Territory".
In the same year the state finally formulated the legal meaning of architectural landmark and ensured equal protection for church and civil properties.
[27] The register compiled by Archaeological Societies was augmented by regional catalogues published by amateurs such as Nikolay Naidenov, author of the four-volume "Moscow Cathedrals, Monasteries and Churches" (1883–1888).
[18] Late 18th and 19th century Empire style buildings were placed on the register shortly before World War I through the efforts of Ivan Mashkov, Ilya Bondarenko of Moscow Architectural Society and the Saint Petersburg school of Russian neoclassical revival.
In the years immediately after the October Revolution, the Bolshevik administration had not yet forged its policy on culture; it was outwardly hostile to religion and "upper" classes, at the same time allowing preservationists to have a say in daily life of Soviet cities.
The same person, Vladimir Lenin, decreed destruction of tsarist monuments and removal of church properties and at the same time authorized maintenance of cultural heritage registers.
In 1940 the academy compiled its own list of top-priority landmarks and assessed the damages, but comprehensive national or even regional heritage registers did not reappear until after World War II.
Losses of World War II, conservatively estimated at 3,000 landmarks,[33][34] and a wartime shift in favor of nationalist ideology raised the politicians' attention to the problems of surviving national heritage.
[35] More than half of listed buildings were located in the historical northern lands of the former Novgorod Republic and Vladimir Rus, with a substantial share of vernacular wooden architecture.
Religious buildings dominated the registers, a consequence of a "conciliatory" policy toward the Russian Orthodox Church that was practiced in the last decade of Joseph Stalin's tenure.
In March, 1962 a group of intellectuals published a bitter article on the destruction of old Moscow in Moskva monthly; official Pravda responded with harsh criticism in May.
[45] In 1965, Pavel Korin, Sergey Konenkov and Leonid Leonov published a call to stop destroying churches and, literally, "preserve our sacred places".
[45][47] Disillusioned advocates (Vladimir Soloukhin, Ilya Glazunov) moved to a public forum of Molodaya Gvardiya magazine, shaping a new, nationalist, version of Russian history that sharply contradicted official doctrine.
Sometimes these dilapidated buildings fell prey to one-off "cleanup" campaigns like those that preceded the 1972 state visit by Richard Nixon or the 1980 Summer Olympics, sometimes to urban renewal programs inherited from Stalin's master plans.
The message did not appease residents who passed everyday examples of neglect and ruin;[51] Soloukhin wrote: "My book[52] could have contained not four essays but twenty four.
[53] The policy of empty declarations continued in 1982, when Dmitry Likhachev reported in Ogonyok that the RSFSR heritage register must be expanded three-fold, to at least 180 thousand items.
[54] The USSR's final years brought no improvement; in 1986 even hard-line communist Yegor Ligachev had to admit in public that "destruction of central Moscow has become a political issue"[55][56] and praised preservationists' efforts.
[66] Only a few cases of destruction (not backed by local authorities) reached the courts; wherever possible, interested developers succeeded in delisting target buildings prior to demolition.
[67] As "ethical reference points were swept aside by a torrent of money", former Minister of Culture Alexander Sokolov described the situation as "bacchanalia of uncoordinated construction".
[74] They are listed in a separate State Code of Particularly Valuable Objects of Cultural Heritage of the Peoples of the Russian Federation[3] which, in addition to immovable properties, includes active institutions (theaters, museums, universities, libraries and archives).
[79] Perhaps worse for the objects is that regional governments cannot legally finance restoration of federal-level buildings unless they are specifically mentioned in jointly-financed federal target programs.
In Saint Petersburg, the city heritage commissioner attempted to enforce demolition of an addition to a building on Moika Embankment that wrecked the skyline of this protected neighborhood.
Western authors noted that preservation of these buildings has a very narrow support base, limited to architects' heirs[90][91] and selected intelligentsia; the general public identifies the bulk of avant-garde architecture with the bland Soviet industrial past, and as devoid of Russian national character.
[94] As a result, far more avant-garde buildings perished in modern Russia than in socialist Soviet Union; the art of the 20th century "have proved to be the most vulnerable and poorly defended".
Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov denounced the "flat-faced architecture";[96] the city's chief architect has spoken against preservation of functional midrise housing built in the 1920s and 1930s,[60] saying, "they are doomed";[97] some of these blocks have been condemned for demolition.
