On 18 October 2023, the State Hermitage and Rossiya Airlines (part of the Areoflot Group) presented in Saint Petersburg the new livery for the Superjet 100 airliner Kaluga .The fuselage of this Russian-made plane with the tail number RA-89171 carries a depiction of the figurine of a deer – a Scythian work of art and one of the symbols of the State Hermitage.
During the presentation of the project, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, and Yan Borisovich Burg, General Director of Rossiya Airlines, signed a collaboration agreement. The parties will combine their efforts to acquaint the populace of Russia with the true diversity of the Hermitage’s encyclopaedic collection.
“We became friendly with your company when it was still called Pulkovo: for us these are very traditional connections that are today turning into something material. We are a museum of world culture, working in the visual sphere – and this is an example of our visual work.
“The Hermitage not only preserves and reveals – the Hermitage has made the subject matter and history of the Scythians an important and world-renowned topic. The Scythians mean more than just Alexander Blok’s poem (‘Yes, we are Scythians – leaves of the Asian tree…’). The Scythians mean a great civilization that nomads created upon an enormous territory. Across the whole of Eurasia what is termed the Scythian culture existed – we study and present it.
“When the Scythian deer appears on aircraft that fly all over Russia, all over Eurasia, all over the world, then that is very beautiful and symbolic. And it is not just the Scythians: the Hermitage, too, is spreading across the whole of Eurasia. We are a global museum,” Mikhail Piotrovsky commented.
“Last year our aircraft carried more than 8.5 million passengers. And I am confident that a significant portion of visitors to the Hermitage flew to Saint Petersburg on Rossiya Airlines planes. Numbers are important. They allow people to get an overall impression, but in our event today, they are definitely not the most important things. The main thing is that the State Hermitage and Rossiya Airlines, so very different yet both firmly associated with Saint Petersburg, have today united their efforts in the cause of spreading knowledge about culture and art, about the Hermitage’s extremely rich collection, combining in a certain sense space, which the airline is responsible for overcoming within our new partnership, and time – some of the most striking and important markers of which the Hermitage preserves in its collection,” Yan Burg stated.
The gold figurine, made to adorn a Scythian gorytos (bow-case) in the 7th–6th centuries BC, was found in 1897 during excavation of a large burial mound next to the Cossack village of Kostromskaya on the River Kuban. Archaeological exploration of Scythian burial mounds, which began back in the 18th century, is still going on today, as a result of which the collection continues to grow.
The particular choice of airliner is no coincidence: next year a new Hermitage satellite centre is due to open in Kaluga. The city has been hosting Hermitage Days since 2016, which, besides exhibitions, include lectures by Hermitage staff and master classes in restoration, as well as screenings of films about the museum and its collections.
The joint project with Rossiya Airlines will tell about the real diversity of the museum’s stocks and become another part of the Greater Hermitage programme. Under that programme, new display spaces are being created and representations of the museum are functioning in Kazan, Vyborg, Omsk and Yekaterinburg, while exhibition centres are preparing to open in Vladivostok and Orenburg.
The project has been supported by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Kaluga Region. In his address to the parties making the agreement, the ministry’s head Pavel Alexandrovich Suslov thanked the project’s initiators for an innovative collaboration and stressed that such partnerships not only enrich national programmes of cultural public education , but also make it possible to sense the magic of the link between art and technology.
The Minister also expressed gratitude to Mikhail Piotrovsky for his assistance in the opening of a State Hermitage cultural public education and exhibition centre in Kaluga Region and separately thanked Rossiya Airlines for paying unprecedented attention to the region.
Russia is one of nine countries in the world where you can take a domestic flight between different continents. The airliner Kaluga is capable of carrying up to 100 passengers and regularly flies on socially significant subsidized routes. The jet can also be found performing the most high-demand domestic and international flights.
Extracted from the depths of the Russian soil, from the far recesses of Russian history, the Kostromskaya deer will now soar upwards on the fuselage of a jet-powered steel machine. Preserving and studying unique historical heritage, the Hermitage provides for continuity between generations. The joint project with Rossiya Airlines aids this highly important museum mission, while the airliner Kaluga will become a means of transport for today’s Eurasian nomads.
