The State Hermitage Museum: Information

An outline of the presentation entitled "Museums in Governmental Cultural Policy"
M.B. Piotrovsky
President of the Union of Museums of Russia,
General Director of the State Hermitage Museum

Museums in Russia, owing to the unique historical features of how their collections, and indeed the institutions themselves, were formed, are the most important, and instruments to preserve expand upon, and study the cultural heritage of Russia, and to "deliver" it to our citizens, and, indeed, sometimes the only ones.

Our country's network of museums is unique, thanks not only to the fantastic diversity of the items preserved in various museums, from trilobites from the Paleozoic Era to spacecraft, from Kostenki Venus figures to Ilya Kabakov's conceptual art, but also to their consistent focus on the educational and cultural aspects of its public operations. One of the main social roles of Russian museums has been and remains that of the primary, most authoritative sources of knowledge about the recent and distant past, which serves to bring the accumulated knowledge of civilization into the future.

It would be naive to suppose that this state of affairs could continue by itself, without effort from the government and society.

After the monstrous losses of the Second World War, along with other principles for its own preservation, humanity developed a universal attitude on the part of world civilization towards its cultural and historical heritage as material and non-material values, the preservation of which is an inherent obligation of states, governments and citizens regardless of political, economic and military circumstances. Furthermore, this obligation was held as higher than the right to private property, and treated as the highest priority for the preservation and development of our civilization.

In the last 20 years, Russia has developed compressive legislation on its cultural and historical heritage, based on those very international principles and norms, for the first time in its history. However, the situation where, as they say, "the harshness of Russian laws is made up for by the fact that they are hardly enforced" is very real in our country.

The Federal Law on Museum Holdings and Museums has been in effect for 15 years now, while the Law on Objects of Cultural Heritage has been in effect for 10 years, but the volume of actual law enforcement practice under these acts is nonexistent. The executive bodies empowered by these laws have so far proved unwilling or unable to:

– organize the work involved in including pieces in the country's Museum holdings

– establish and implement a State catalogue of these holdings and develop adequate methods for record keeping and preservation of museum items, based on contemporary technology

– to this day, there is neither a common state register of objects of cultural heritage, nor one historical/cultural conservation area. Unique historical, cultural and natural sites continue to be classified as "general purpose land."

The comprehensive checking of the status of cultural treasures held in the museums of the Russian Federation, held in 2007-2009, among other things, presented the authorities with unique material that should have served as the basis of a breakthrough in law enforcement practice. Unfortunately, this is not happening.

The question of the practical implementation of the terms and regulations of the legislation on Museum Holdings and Museums and objects of cultural heritage has recently become especially urgent, given the fact that the transitional period in the operation of the Federal Law entitled "On the Introduction of Changes to Individual Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation in order to Improve the Legal Status of State (Municipal) Institutions" No. 83-FZ, dated May 8th, 2010, is expiring. Because of the inaction of the authorized executive bodies, hundreds of museums have been left facing substantial reductions in their budgetary financing.

It would be unfair to claim that the government is not devoting enough attention to the work of Russia's museums. Yet at the same time, the contemporary situation facing museums is such that a long-term program of actions by all layers of the government, covering all aspects of the formation, preservation, study and presentation of Museum holdings and of the operation of the country's museums is essential for its stabilization and transition to planned, sustainable development.

The professional community has already done practically everything to lay the groundwork for expanding the presence of museums in state cultural policy. A draft of the Strategy for the Development of Museum Work in the Russian Federation until 2030 has been developed and presented to the cultural and governmental authorities on more than one occasion.

The draft presented by the museum community is dedicated to completing the following tasks:

The preservation of museum holdings, for which the creation of large-scale storage facilities that ensure the safety, recording keeping, conservation and registration of the Museum holdings of the Russian Federation, which will minimize potential harm to this part of the cultural heritage of the peoples of the Russian Federation due to criminal acts, emergencies of a technological or man-made nature, and the natural aging of the materials the museum pieces are made from is of strategic importance. The primary threats facing the Museum holdings of the Russian Federation are: the physical deterioration of the buildings, structures and equipment that are used to store and exhibit museum pieces, the obsolete nature of the technology used in the storage, conservation, record keeping and restoration of museums pieces.

The study of museum holding. The strategic plan indicates that museums face the large-scale task of attaining a noticeable breakthrough in the volume and quality of scientific research, both that which is directly connected with museum pieces and that which is related to corresponding scientific subjects. The absence or incompleteness of scientific knowledge about a museum piece itself, or about the historical phenomenon that it documents, make it impossible to truly present that piece to the viewer, which, in the eyes of visitors, reduces a museum to a collection of rarities that have lost all true connection to the historical process.

Expanding Museum Holdings: The documentation of the processes of social and natural history by museums must be uninterrupted; any interruptions to it mean that material evidence from times that as recently as yesterday might be called contemporary, and tomorrow will already have become history, have been lost forever. Such interruptions often leave room for historical falsification. The limitations on the expansion of the country's Museum holdings (which were ideological in the Soviet period and are financial in our time) have extremely serious consequences, especially for generations to come. We cannot allow the late 20th and early 21st century of Russian history be represented exclusively by video clips of pop stars and the interface of the Yandex search engine.

Presenting Museum Holdings, the educational operations of museums. The four primary tasks of any museum, the preservation, study, expansion and presentation of museum items, exist and are realized only as a complete whole. A museum without visitors will lose its nature just like a museum without a scientifically systematized collection or storage facilities.

Strategically, it is very important to provide every resident of Russia, regardless of his or her place of residence, with the opportunity to see priceless historical artifacts and masterpieces of national and world art, and not only in digital or printed form. It is precisely for this reason that the development of a common museum space will not end with solving the problem of access to broadband internet, but requires the creation of a modern museum/exhibit infrastructure throughout Russia. It is only possible to make the constitutionally guaranteed right of every citizen to access to cultural treasures, and the use of museums as cultural institutions is only possible when well-equipped museum halls that satisfy all international requirements will work just as well in Kaliningrad as they do on the Sakhalin Island.

The entire storage, scientific, organizational and staff potential of a museum is revealed in how its educational activities are organized. It is strategically important for museum education to give due consideration to age, gender, social and professional factors, the level of education, the needs of the disabled, etc. The key strategic task of this type of museum work is unifying educational programs, and eliminating of stereotypes, as well the perception of a museum as entertainment or a formal part of a "tourist product."

Developing the solutions of the Governmental Commission on conducting comprehensive checks of the status of the cultural treasures in the museums of the Russian Federation; as early as 2008-2009, the Union of Museums of Russia developed a draft of the State Program for Ensuring the Safety of the Museum Holdings of the Russian Federation until 2020. Radical improvement of the entire infrastructure for the storage and preservation of the Museum holdings of the Russian Federation as a vital condition for the subsequent institutional and technological modernization of this sphere of cultural operations is critically important for the Union of Museums of Russia.

Both of these documents, for reasons that are unclear to the museum community, were not discussed with the leaderships and the specialists from the institutions overseeing the industry.

As a result, a new federal special purpose program entitled "The Culture of Russia, 2012-2018," was presented to the government for approval, the structure and mechanisms of which were formulated without any consideration not only of the museum community, but also of instructions issued directly by the Governmental Commission.

The fragmentary and inconsistent nature of governmental cultural policy in recent years is largely connected with excessive delays in work on a new basic law On Culture. The community of museum professionals has already formulated its approach to the nature, goals and mechanisms of this law several times.

We are convinced that this law must be based on the following axioms:

– civilization and culture are one and the same, and no development (whether it be political, social, or economic) is possible without culture

– Russia will only be a great cultural power when the rights of citizens in the area of culture are not merely declared, but truly (materially, financially and legally) ensured by the government through the formation, support and development of a common cultural space in the country, the unconditional preservation of the rich material and spiritual cultural heritage of the peoples of Russia, the promotion of Russian culture and cultural heritage around the world, and the cultivation of knowledge and feelings of respect, love and responsibility towards Russian culture, its cultural heritage and the Russian language among the population.

"Cultural legislation" built on this foundation must, finally, cease to be defined as "industry-wide" and be perceived by everyone as a system of legal norms that permeate all areas of national legislation and the life of the country as a whole.

It is only possible to fully complete this task through the development and implementation not of a special federal law, but a Code of Laws on the Culture of the Russian Federation.

Today it is perfectly obvious that one of the main tasks of contemporary legislation on culture is to establish a clear, unambiguous list of the type of cultural activity, the regulation of which is of the nature expressed here.

Economics, as a sphere of human activity, is the expenditure of resources to produce consumer goods, everything that increases prosperity and satisfies people's various needs.

Culture, on the other hand, is a sphere of human activity dedicated first and foremost to the forming those same needs; however, culture is concerned with needs of a higher order.

As such, areas of cultural activity such as creating works of art, performing works of arts, the preservation, study and presentation of museum holdings, the formation, systemization and study of archival holdings, the formation and preservation of the holdings of the National Library and library/informational services, the identification, preservation and popularization of artifacts of history and culture, the preservation and popularization of the non-material cultural heritage of the peoples of the Russian Federation, cannot, by their very nature, be considered part of economic activity and require completely different legal regulation.

The new legislation on culture certainly must contain both concrete definition of the constitutional standards on the obligations and powers of the government in the area of culture. It is precisely in this legislative act that it is necessary to define the forms in which the rights of citizens in the sphere of culture are implemented, what the basic principles and terms of the cultural policy of the Russian Federation are (in precisely this sense and formulation, and not "defining the main priorities and goals of government policy in the area of culture"), how exactly the executive authorities provide support for culture and the preservation of the cultural heritage of the peoples of the Russian Federation.

This legislation on culture must, once and forever, establish the features of the status, purpose and area of operation of institutions that are engaged in preserving cultural and historical heritage, as well institutions that provide professional education in the field of art and culture.

It essential for the new legislation to unalterably establish a standard for the irreducibility of all types of cultural activity to provide services (governmental or otherwise) to the population, clearly define those governmental functions which cultural institutions and institutions of cultural education in the Russia Federation, by their nature, fulfill.

On the basis of such legislation on culture, governmental cultural policy in general and its museum-related components in particular, would finally make it possible to practically unify the approaches to regulation in the sphere of culture, provide effective, well-considered governmental support for the preservation and development of society's cultural potential, and built up a system of priorities for Russia's long-term cultural development.

As applied to museums, it would make is possible to remove the following items from the agenda

The constantly recurring subject of institutional museums as "low profile assets"
The fact that municipal museums have practically ceased to fulfill their primary functions when they are defined as "multifunctional cultural/leisure centers," which take on absurd forms of "optimization" of the country's network of museums.
A true opportunity to demarcate the line between the interests of the business of tourism and museum work would arise, so that the fashionable plague of creating "tourist clusters" in every region of our vast homeland will not lead to museums losing their intrinsic features and functions, or to the loss of museum holdings and artifacts of history and culture.
It would become impossible for government agencies to transfer state functions and powers to manage federal museums and handle museum holdings to private organizations (which have no connection with museum work), which, for all practical purposes, has happened in the case of the Polytechnic Museum.
Finally, it would prohibit the occurrence of forecasts and programs for the socioeconomic development of the country from which culture and cultural heritage are completely excluded, such as the recently published report from expert groups on refining the "2020 Strategy" (the Higher School of Economics and the Academy of National Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation).

Russia's museums preserve, study and restore almost 90 million items. Museum installations, exhibits, programs and educational events are visited by over 80 million people every year. All of this work with the priceless treasures of our cultural heritage and the millions of visitors who come to see it is done for salaries that are more than 2.5 times smaller than the national average; in almost 20 regions, museum workers' salaries are still lower than the minimum living wage.

Those who, despite difficult circumstances, preserve the country's museum holdings and open museum halls to viewers do not attend demonstrations or hold strikes. We cannot consider ourselves members of which is now called the "creative class;" we cannot do so because we think and speak in Russian; we understand the bitter lessons of world history better than many, and, most importantly, what we value most in contemporary people is their being involved in culture, their ability to view the world creatively and to remake it.