Twentieth-Century Museums of National History and Literature in Contemporary Russia

Abstract

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 forced museums and other guardians of the nation's cultural heritage to reassess their priorities and develop new, nonideological missions in presenting their collections to the public.

Notes

^1. “St. Petersburg: Post-Soviet Identifications” [Postsovetskie identifikatsii Peterburga] (Renvall Institute, Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 1999–2003, project supervisor Professor Elena Hellberg-Hirn) and “Evaluation of the Effectiveness of International Professional Development Programs for Russian Arts Managers” [Otsenka effektivnosti mezhdunarodnykh programm povyshenii kvalifikatsii rossiiskikh menedzherov v sfere kul'tury] (CEC International Partners and the Center for Independent Sociological Research, 2004, project supervisors Katerina Gerasimova and Susan Katz). The interviews cited were conducted by the author. This article does not utilize any of the material collected on Moscow museums.

^2. Areas were selected that provided examples to illustrate this article's basic tenets; only museums that the author was able to visit in person were included. The Northwest and the Volga Region are special in that the opportunities to study new management methods were greater there than elsewhere in Russia. On the cultural and societal milieu in the Volga Region, see V.L. Glazychev, Glubinnaia Rossiia, 2000–2002 (Moscow: Novoe izdatel'stvo, 2003).

^3. The Museum of the Political History of Russia (formerly the Museum of the October Revolution) in St. Petersburg, the Smol'nyi Historical and Memorial Museum in St. Petersburg, the St. Petersburg Museum of the Revolutionary and Democratic Movement, the S.M. Kirov House Museum in St. Petersburg, the A.M. Gor'kii museums in Nizhnii Novgorod and Kazan, the Chapaev Museum in Cheboksary, and the Elizarov Apartment Museum in St. Petersburg.

^4. The Anna Akhmatova Museum at the Fountain House in St. Petersburg and the A.D. Sakharov Memorial Apartment Museum in Nizhnii Novgorod.

^5. Giep Hagoort, Art Management: Entrepreneurial Style (Delft: Eburon Uitgeverij, 2000).

^6. Laurier Turgeon and Élise Dubuc, “Musées d'ethnologie: nouveaux défis, nouveaux terrains,” Ethnologies, vol. 24, no. 2.

^7. François-René Martin, “Politique et culture: les musées et le patrimoine” (PhD diss., Université Robert Schuman de Strasbourg (Strasbourg-III), Institut d'études politiques, 1995).

^8. Edward P. Alexander, Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Function of Museums (Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1979).

^9. See also http://www.museums.udmweb.ru [URL nonfunctional January 2016—Trans.].

^10. K. Gerasimova and S. Chuikina, “Ot kapitalisticheskogo Peterburga k sotsialisticheskomu Leningradu: izmenenie sotsial'no-prostranstvennoi struktury goroda v 30-e gody,” in Normy i tsennosti povsednevnoi zhizni: stanovlenie sotsialisticheskogo obraza zhizni v Rossii v 1920-e–1930-e gody, ed. T. Vikhvainen [Timo Vihvainen] (St. Petersburg, 2000), pp. 27–74.

^11. E. Korchagin, “Magazin pri muzee,” in Materialy rossiisko-britanskogo seminara “Muzei Sankt-Peterburga v usloviiakh rynochnoi ekonomiki, ed. A.D. Margolis (St. Petersburg: Kontrfors, 1997).

^12. An endowment [endoument] is the donation by a private party, a bank, or a company of a sizable sum to a museum that the museum is not permitted to spend but instead invests (in consultation with outside financial experts) and receives regular income from those investments.

^13. There are several long-term European programs that help send museum policy makers abroad: the Euro-Arctic Diploma in Cultural Management (Barents-adjacent countries), the European Diploma in Cultural Project Management, an educational program of the Regional Museum Council of Yorkshire and Humberside (Great Britain), and Courants du Monde (France). The United States also has programs of its own: study visits under the auspices of the US Department of State (the Open World Leadership Center), IREX training programs, and specialized programs for museum directors supported by several foundations.

^14. Museum projects in Russia have been actively sponsored by foreign foundations, an especially large role in this going to the Culture Program of the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) [now the Open Society Foundations—Trans.]. With that foundation's support, many museums have been computerized, and numerous professional development programs have been established. See Muzei v epokhu peremen: Institut “Otkrytoe obshchestvo” (Fond Sorosa)–Rossiia v podderzhku rossiiskikh muzeev, 1966–2000) (Moscow: Ob’’edienennoe gumanitarnoe izdatel'stvo, 2001). Programs for Russian arts managers within Russia have also been funded by the US State Department, the European Union, the European Commission, the Eurasia Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Kettering Family Foundation, the McCormick Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Starr Foundation, the Fund for Arts and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe, and the foreign ministries of various countries. Among Russian organizations offering short-term seminars for art managers, the Muzei budushchego [Museum of the Future] association specializes in setting up training sessions for museum employees (http://www.future.museum.ru).

^15. See, in particular, E. Soboleva, “Formirovanie martketingovoi orientatsii muzeev Sankt-Peterburga,” in VI World Congress for Central and East European Studies: Divergencies, Convergencies, Uncertainties: Abstracts (Tampere: International Council for Central and East European Studies, 2000), p. 403 ff.

^16. M. Gnedovskii, “Mezhdunarodnye obrazovatel'nye programmy dlia rossiiskikh menedzherov kul'tury—itogi desiatiletiia,” http://www.cpolicy.ru/news.plx?id = 242 [http://www.culturalmanagement.ru/infocenter/?cid = 9&aid = 598—Trans.].

^17. The most interesting implementation of the idea of regional development through culture is the Cultural Capital of the Volga Region [Kul'turnaia stolitsa Povol'zhia] program, which is directed by S.V. Krivenko in the Volga Federal District, http://www.culturecapital.ru [http://fc-amkar.org/eng/europe/—Trans.].

^18.Kul'turnyi turizm: konvergentsiia kul'tury i turizma na poroge XXI veka: Uchebnoe posobie, ed. Ia. Braun, V. Andersen, and V. Gordin (St. Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta ekonomiki i finansov, 2001).

^19. Daniel J. Sherman, The Construction of Memory in Interwar France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)[p. 10—Trans.].

^20. P. Nora et al., Frantsiia-Pamiat’, trans. from the French (St. Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 1999) [a translation of seminal texts from Pierre Nora's Lieux de mémoire—Trans.].

^21. Éric Mension-Riggau, La vie des chateaux (Paris: Éditions Perrin, 1999).

^22. Interview with Valentina Ivanovna Brovchenkova, director of the Chapaev Museum (Cheboksary, 2004).

^23. On this, see Margolis, Muzei v period peremen.

^24. S. Glezerov, “Tipichnyi uglovoi zhilets Vladimir Ul'ianov,” Nevskoe vremia, 1 February 2001.

^25.Virtual'nyi muzei GULAGa. Obzor resursov (St. Petersburg: Naucho-issledovatel'skii tsentr “Memorial”), DVD; Konrad Adenauer Stiftung [Foundation]; the Perm-36 Memorial Museum; the National Museum of the Komi Republic; Prodiuserskii tsentr “Artikam,” 2004.

^26. E. Zhessa-Anshtet [Elisabeth Gessat-Anstett], “Pamiat’: vechnaia ili kurinaia? Memorial'naia logika v postsovetskoi Rossii,” Ab imperio, 2004, no. 1, pp. 519–38.

^27. T.A. Ryzhova, “Muzei A.M. Gor'kogo: problemy i poiski (k 75-letiiu so dnia osnovaniia),” Nizhegorodskii muzei, 2003, no. 1, pp. 21–24.

^28. Jean-Louis Déotte, Oubliez! Les ruines, l'Europe, le musée (Paris: l'Harmattan, 1994).

^29. See also [Laurent Gervereau, ed.,] Musées d'histoire et histoire dans les musées. Actes du séminaire du 17 juin 1992 (Paris: Association internationale des musées d'histoire / Direction des musées de France / Ministère de l'éducation nationale et de la culture, 1992).

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Sofia Tchouikina

Sofia Tchouikina is a sociologist currently teaching at Université Paris VIII Vincennes - Saint-Denis. For years, she has worked as Senior Researcher at Centre for Independent Social Research (CISR) in St. Petersburg, Russia.