The State Hermitage Museum: Information

View from the Hermitage. In Search of Spiritual Assets
Article in the St Petersburg Vedomosti
27 July 2009 (N 138)

The 9th Petersburg Dialogue Forum took place in Munich recently. Long ago this forum has become a successful combination of state and public cooperation.

Representatives of public organization gather together in order to participate in it; a meeting of leaders of Russia and Germany runs parallel to it, but at some point they come together for a general discussion. The forum allows discussing various problems from different viewpoints. The 'Dialogues' are St Petersburg initiative, they refer not only to our city but are broader.

Together with the head of Goethe-Institute Professor Lehmann we are at the head of the Culture group. Our group is in charge of a whole range of projects. One of them is the project of protection of monuments of avant-garde architecture. We should teach people that this architecture is of historic value. We organized a number of meetings, exhibitions. Krasnoje Znamya (Red Banner) factory became the ground for practicing Russian-German cooperation. It was built by German architect Mendelsohn, now it is in private hands; the Committee on State Control, Use and Protection of Monuments and the community take part in the destiny of the monument. There are a lot of problems, but I think that we will find a recipe to save and correctly use, in both cultural and economic respects, this masterpiece of avant-garde architecture that unites Russia and Germany.

We conducted a conference on the new topic for cooperation - young cinema. Russian cinematograph was always in touch with the German now the process has come to a standstill. We are trying to activate it. There are organizations in Germany that promote German films in Russia. Russian films are not shown in Germany despite there is great interest towards them. Agreement that will help to untie the knot has been drawn up.

A part of problems that are discussed in sections is voiced at the final meeting of forum participants with leaders of the states and as a rule suggested solutions get 'the green light'. In due course of time the Petersburg Dialogues gave its blessing to the exhibition about the Merovingian epoch, now the Bronze Age exhibition is under development. It is dedicated to archaeological unity of Europe; items from the Hermitage and German displaced values are going to be presented there. Such exhibitions demand patronage of high level.

Usually at the 'dialogues' two main reports are made by politicians of high rank, leaders of the forum. This time it was decided to break the practice. Professor Otmar Issing, economist, financier, former director of the National Bank and at present the expert of the German Government was one of the key speakers. His report was mostly related to financial situation and was called "The Requirements to New Financial Order". In short, the meaning is as follows - market economy is scolded for nothing, it is not guilty of anything, it can not be regulated too much for nothing good will come out of it. Financial suggestions followed later on.

I was the second speaker and talked about a chance that is given to civil society by the crisis. It makes the state listen to public opinion. There is a whole range of situations showing that such opinion is influential and it can help in solving problems. For the society it is a chance that should be used.

Expectation of crisis in our country was up in the air; there was too much ostentatious wealth and confidence in omnipotence and power of money. The present crisis has its own peculiarities. For us it is the first capitalistic crisis, we wrote off all the previous ones due to the sins of socialism. Now we have to reflect upon what extent was Marx right when considering crises to be cyclic. But we did not forget how in times of perestroika we were being assured that developed capitalism does not have crises. People feel disoriented.

The main thought that was heard at the forum particularly from the heads of delegations is that we should come out of the crisis jointly. Of course it is possible to save singly, but this is bad. It is simply immoral to climb out of a debt pit on someone else’s shoulders. People should get rid of problems by resorting to mutual assistance. Prince-anarchist Peter Kropotkin, thinker and revolutionary, was the first to write in his book about mutual assistance as a factor of evolution. Now philosophers and practitioners rely upon mutual assistance. They believe that it is capable of 'humanizing' the process of social development that manifests itself in Darwin's 'natural selection', 'law of the jungle' and 'market nature' that in very deed looks approximately the same. Mutual assistance is important for evolution, it makes us come out of problems together, includes moral factor, and good economic result may be expected from all that.

There are two ways of struggling with crisis. The first is cooperation between society and authorities. The second is further bureaucratization and full regulation of the whole lot. Society has a chance to get enhanced bureaucratic control, to establish discipline by means of endless inspections (from small-scale businesses to museum preserves), tougher rules of small-scale supervision over each step... In order to avoid all this we should take actions - legislation changes in time of crisis and we should take it up closely.

Positive changes in public awareness make me happy. 'Corporate' culture is changing, more and more people say that there are more important things than money. Priorities are defined more precisely - who should get the preference in price regulation - dealers or manufacturers? Who is more important for museums - visitor or tourist companies? What is more important - to preserve monuments of culture or to build cheap houses? We have to make a choice in conditions of crisis. Culture may become our guideline first of all because its economy is healthy. It does not plan on receiving 500% income, it is based upon social programmes and goals. For example, the Hermitage should provide free entrance for certain categories of people. We set a goal, search for means - at whose expense?

Culture is not a state institution, it is a part of civil society. It is a result of this society. Communication with culture convinces more and more people that decisions based on beauty, positive emotions and moral are more often right than decisions dictated by primitive calculation. There is a wonderful book written by young Swedish economists Funky Business. It states that strictly academic approach debunked itself. It created anthropogenic catastrophes that can not be dealt with. People should turn on emotional part of their mind as often as they turn on their rational part. In this respect there are evident changes. The world ’culture’ that has not even been mentioned in official documents in Russia is repeated now more often.

Problems of crisis are different for our countries since the countries are different too. Germany is small, Russia is big. In our country crisis has different appearance in the capital and in province and that should be taken into consideration. Humanist aspect of economy becomes more and more important. It combines a wide range of rights - rights of culture, people and nature.

Some consider crisis to be an invention. Others think that the world is really and seriously changing. We, thinking people, should determine how it would change. We should not let separating us, even to prove the world how great we are. There are two ways out of the crisis - with the help of bureaucracy one by one and with the help of civil society together. We should give unity a chance since we missed it once after the cold war.

It is often said that we should not mix terms 'state' and 'power'. Since the state does not own anything the term changed - power and apparat. In the process of the Dialogue all pointed out the main problem - lack of trust particularly to power and its institutions. Financiers do not trust banks, society does not trust the state, the state does not trust society... We should re-establish trust with the help of culture and correctly regulated market. The point is that there should be more freedom of decision and when decisions are made there should be more positive emotions and culture. Interestingly, not too long before the forum a new encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI that mostly discusses that moral should determine economy and relations between people. Archbishop under the name Marx wrote a book called Capital in Munich. There he spoke about spiritual asset that determine economic movement. There is a basis for unity of opinions and actions.