Mikhail Piotrovsky: Even if there are many truths, one needs to retain confidence in one’s own rightness

How to live in a world of sovereign cultures

What sort of time will we be entering in the new year? In what cultural dimension will we find ourselves? What did the future-oriented discussions at the Saint Petersburg Cultural Forum suggest to us?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: It was not for nothing that the forum called itself the Forum of United Cultures/

That’s not an attempt to replace UNESCO?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: No, it doesn’t aspire to that. But it is indeed seeking answers to the question of how we are going to live in a new time and world. We have, after all, found ourselves in effect in a world of sovereign cultures. The era of vulgar globalism has come to an end, exhausted itself.

Vulgar globalism was when everyone acquired the latest devices for making life technically easier – the Internet, cars, mobile phones became identical, and it seemed that they would become equal. But they didn’t. That identicalness coupled with inequality is the main irritant in the world today – emotional, cultural, social. A sense of dissatisfaction and irritation is characteristic for the whole world. It’s on account of that that everyone started to want sovereignty of cultures.

Sovereignty is independence. But is absolute independence beneficial for a culture?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Yes, a sovereign culture is “Here I am in my culture and I don’t need anyone and won’t give anyone anything – push off.” Everyone has their own rights; they want to be separate, appreciated. We need also to understand and decide how we are live in conditions of the sovereignty of cultures.

There is a good recipe that applies to cultures and also to economies, to customs, to art, to skin colour and to sexual orientation… All are equal, but no-one should seek to stick out. Don’t impose yourself, don’t imagine that you alone are right and everyone else is wrong. The practice of museum life, like nothing else, teaches us to be able to see all the complexities of the world. For people to respect each other in this way, though, they must understand one another. Truly understand. And that means grasping all their own complexity and other people’s. Not just: “He’s red, I’m white, and we can just prise out what we don’t like.” The practice of museum life, like nothing else, teaches us the ability to see all the complexities.

Museums first of all attempt to explain. Encountering a lack of understanding, the Hermitage goes further and seeks to push through laws protecting culture – ones that confirm that a museum is not some warehouse from which something can be taken at any moment, but a collection. A collection that unites things, people, ideas, architecture, approaches and methods. The relevant amendments to the law have now been passed by the Federal Assembly and signed by the President.

We have long since been bargaining with the West as equals

Another topic currently important worldwide will probably be passed on to the new year – colonialism.

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Yes, all over the place, time and again, the cries of those with hurt feelings can be heard, saying that someone was colonized and someone needs to overcome their colonial instincts.

And the fact that in the past 30 years Russia was trampled down by the West was that not a sort of colonization – conceptual, logical, cultural?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Of course not. When we lost the Cold War and were on the brink of civil conflict and foreign intervention (and both the one and the other were in the offing: troops might have been brought in “to protect democratic principles”, and domestically all sorts was going on), Gorbachev and Yeltsin fell back, as the Scythians once had. With the intention that their successors – and therein lies the philosophical sense of what is happening – would be able to collect themselves and respond.

At that time, we did make many concessions. But we did so  in order to embrace the merits of a world over which we had seemingly been prevailing, before it very nearly conquered us. Taking all that on board was certainly no easy matter, through the criminal schemes of the initial accumulation of capital. We did it, though, and now it’s already clear that we can handle everything.

It’s easier for me to speak about museums… Over the past 20 years Russian museums have been setting the fashion in the world. Reading an article with the blaring headline “Manet’s Olympia is going to New York”, I can see what a major event that is: the picture has never been to America and has hardly been anywhere else either. Yet it did come to Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Because showing it here, in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, was prestigious. In exchange for Olympia, the Hermitage and the Pushkin Museum provided the opportunity to show five paintings in France that had hardly ever travelled anywhere. That was a civilized bargain between equals. We came up with an equal deal and put it forward. Our counterparts did attempt to bargain as if superior to us, but it was clear that there were no longer any pushovers. We played our hand well and still do.

Look how we have stood up to sanctions. In 1991 we would not have endured a thousandth part of it, but the country has been preparing for this for 30 years. Russia is a country with an imperial, not a colonial, mindset. Even among the debris of empire, it remains imperial. And no-one has conquered us. Well, they did buy shares in our companies and then try to exercise more control than they had a right to, but we came through all those schemes. Experiencing a dreadful shock, great trials, social division, people getting scared, overall we coped. We emerged with a strong country and alongside there are quite a few more strong countries. That how those colonial feelings ought to be got rid of and this endless malady of colonialism ought to be cured around the world. Meanwhile people are accustomed to quoting Kipling’s “East is East, and West is West”, forgetting that he goes on to say “When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!” In point of fact, all are strong. Oriental studies, incidentally, teaches that well. And colonialism is only a contest between different forces: who’s stronger and who’s weaker. “Right here and now” we are not weaker. On the contrary, we have mastered many things. It’s a different matter that we have lost something of our own…

What?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Confidence in our rightness. The influence of post-modernism with its “there are many truths” has also had an effect, of course. Still, even if “there are many truths”, one needs to retain confidence in one’s own rightness…

But has there not been a shortage of our own major, outstanding ideas, practices, aesthetics…

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Yes, we do have them.

Our handing over of the shrine of Alexander Nevsky sets an example for the world – of what to do with the Parthenon and how, for example.

The uncertainty arises more out of a lack of awareness that they exist.

Diderot is no stranger to us

Another vexed question is about Russia and the world. Might not a world of sovereign cultures mean them cutting themselves off one from another?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: We have long been a part of European civilization, since the Middle Ages, although we do have our own as well. We are not going anywhere away from Europe, nor Europe from us. When it comes to the present political bans… Just look! We shut ourselves off for so many years in Soviet times, now they are shutting themselves off from us… Still, just as we did not tear ourselves away from European civilization back then (although we did diverge from it ideologically), we will not do so now either.

It's possible to take different views on isolation, too. Russia has gone into isolation many times and come out of it far from feeling guilty and miserable. Isolation provides grounds for focussing, for concentrating. For finding new ties, new assessments.

We recently opened an exhibition about Denis Diderot’s Salons (together with the Pushkin Museum), Although we are now living under a blockade and can’t obtain any exhibits from French museums, it turns out that we can (and did) piece together the whole historical evolution of the French Salons – including masterpieces! – from ten or so Russian museums. Because Denis Diderot is a special name for Russia. He is no stranger to us. While he was a philosopher and art critic, he was also a dealer and an advisor to Catherine the Great. He helped her buy Crozat’s collection and other important works for the Hermitage. His countrymen criticized him for that, cursed him on account of the pictures going abroad. Catherine left the library that she bought from Diderot in his keeping; paying him a salary as its curator for the rest of his life, and only then had it removed to Russia. Some people are still saying about it and about Voltaire’s library, that it’s terrible they went to those barbarians in the East.

Precisely that, though, was real communication between Russia and Europe. Diderot travelled here, had meetings with Catherine. He really enjoyed conversing with her, although she tried to chat with him about the Enlightenment, while he kept seeking to tell her how to rule Russia. When that came up she sidelined him, but he nevertheless wrote a book about how Russia should be ruled.

Still, that is an example of relations when Russia took what it wanted from the West and did not take what was not needed. An example of the kind of interaction always characteristic for Peter [the Great] already in his time.  Interact, learn what you don’t know, but do everything the way that you should – that is again a very museum-style lesson for society and the world.

How do you assess the situation with the cultural blockade?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: There are already many examples of how the blockade can be broken on the quiet. Although, in general we are not now taking museum objects abroad, we did just have an exhibition travel to China and come back. That was a specific decision and specific conditions.

An exhibition came here from Oman along with a large delegation, and ours will be going to Oman. A few items were brought from Turkey for an exhibition devoted to Turkish art. We had for a time something remarkable from Israel – a model of the First Temple. So, we are finding new means of cultural interaction.

What’s the main thing that’s now needed for the continuation of cultural ties?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Fresh guarantees are needed. At one time we did have super-reliable ones and they allowed us, even with the extreme worsening of the political situation at the start of the SMO [Special Military Operation], to get all our collections back.

The money can’t be returned, but the collections can! Now we need fresh guarantees and fresh forms of collaboration.

How are you including the new territories – the Donbass, Novorossiya – into a single museum sphere?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: That’s a serious task demanding a great deal of calm work –  beyond slogans. I hear “It’s terrible what they were taught there”. I respond, but they were in a different sphere, and we need, without “hurrahs!”, to include them into ours. Helping in all ways, reconstructing, restoring, organizing exhibitions. In order to have more contact, we are arranging working visits, showing them what we are doing here. Our specialist will be going to them to hold master classes. What needs to be done in the Donbass, is roughly what we are doing all over Russia when we hold Hermitage Days. It’s inclusion of that sort which will make them part of a common sphere with us. Yes, it is in flames, but it’s part of our sphere.

Nor ought we to behave as if there is no special operation. There is a special operation, but the situation also demands all manner of non-military work from us. And the SMO will only be victorious, if standing in the rear, besides those making the shells, there will also be those who are prepared for the day that comes after the victory.

There are more important things than peace

Have we grown accustomed to the SMO? Only the world is divided more sharply between two poles – some at the cutting edge of courage and tragedy, others convinced it has nothing to do with them. What is happening with those who are not at the poles?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: People live, gritting their teeth. And work, gritting their teeth. Such is life during military actions.

Everything that is happening now in Russia is part of a larger worldwide process. And – as often happens with us – we are at its cutting edge. Russia often finds itself in the forefront when the world changes and suffers the greatest losses.

Now we have a situation with slow military operations, while inside of many of us the ideal would be the war in 1812. Everything in just one year: retreat – counterattack – Berezina…

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Well, it means that’s how things have turned out – preventative strikes, a slow course… Things have gone all sorts of ways in Russian history. That same war in 1812 was preceded by Austerlitz and, incidentally, a war on foreign soil. And 1941 was followed by the slow and difficult years of 1942 and 1943. History is a remarkable thing. It can always help us to calm down and realize that even a defeat can be reckoned a victory. While a victory can be described as a defeat. Both our side and the French take equal pride in a victory at Borodino. And the Battle of the Berezina, too, by the way was both a victory and a defeat.

Among the main lessons that we have taken away from the latest events it has become clear that for many there are things more important than peace. That was a famous pronouncement by the one-time head of NATO, General Haig, that “there are more important things than peace”, which everyone found very amusing. It turns out, though, that he was right. It’s not pleasant, but it is the psychological reality.

Military operations move slowly, the times on the other hand move very quickly. And are incredibly changeable. Some five months on and we have a different mental picture of the world. Everything is changing, like during the Civil War…

Mikhail Piotrovsky: And the SMO combines within it the starts of both a world war and a civil one. While in the Civil War, indeed, the situation every day was “different again”. Kerensky was ever such a hero! He is in point of fact a very important figure in our country’s history, but one that does not accord either with the mass psychology or with much else besides… Historical roles changed back then, and they are changing now.

However, the way that reality can change in a second or two is, sadly, the “accomplishment” of the latest media technologies. At the same time, they are also changing our psychology. You should either go along with this constantly flickering presentation and switch over, or categorically reject it, or else assess it in a particular way.

On the return of the shrine of Prince Alexander Nevsky
and Rublev’s Trinity

What we have done with the shrine of Alexander Nevsky is part of a major process of restitution going on all around the world, with demands for museums to give back this and that, to here and to there. With us, in particular, there is restitution to the Church.

I personally am firmly convinced that such matters should be decided at the very highest level – individually and politically. With the handing over of the shrine of Alexander Nesky, we created a model for what needs to be done with the Parthenon.

Today we are living through a time when the reliquary should function above all symbolically, in a ritual way. Just as when people queued up for hours to see the Cincture of the Theotokos. Such feelings ought to be respected, while setting one’s own aside a little for the moment.

In conjunction with the Church, we are now establishing a whole system for how we can work together in other similar instances. We are building new relations, produced by a new time. Without that, we would have argued another ten times, stood firm and not given anything to the Church. Now, though, it’s a different time and we are going along with that. It’s the same thing with Rublev’s Trinity…

At the Russian Academy of Sciences board on world culture, of which I am head, we discussed the question of how to preserve very old ecclesiastical art, including Rublev’s Trinity. What to do to keep it from perishing.

We considered that it would be better off not in the Trinity Cathedral, so as not to distract people visiting the relics of Saint Sergius of Radonezh, but in the small Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, where it will be in a unique position. Admittedly, the small church cannot accommodate large crowds, but there could be access to it like there is to Leonardo’s Last Supper or Giotto’s frescoes. Plus there it is possible to install climate-control equipment, as has been done in the Annunciation Church at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.

In a museum a fake can be more interesting than the real thing

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Museums are trying to resolve the problem of suspiciousness that is troubling the entire world. The conviction that everything around you is lies, that nothing is to be trusted, that everyone is deceiving everyone else – in politics, in diplomacy. Wars are being waged by deceitful means, as in the Middle East. When it comes to museums – here the average person is absolutely sure about the lies – there’s just fakes and copies, nothing authentic…

We, though, held an exhibition “Sèvres, Replicas, Fakes”. We did not tell people about the authentic Sèvres, like in an antique shop where only genuine articles are appreciated, but we showed the entire history of the Sèvres phenomenon, the whole culture around it.

In our showcases there are genuine Sèvres pieces, copies, attempts to produce replicas and to show that they are not inferior to Sèvres, imitations of Sèvres… It comes together to form a remarkable picture of European culture and you understand that “authentic–non-authentic” is a complex matter… You can stand for hours and scrutinize what makes the blue produced in Paris different from the blue that was made in Berlin, perhaps in imitation of the Parisian colour, or maybe not…

It's simple in the antique shop, where the fake is worth nothing and the real thing billions. With us, though, everything is complicated.

When we bought Böcklin’s painting Isle of the Dead and in its honour created a splendid exhibition – Symbolist art and 18th-century France, the Isle of Love versus the Ilse of the Dead, everyone for some reason wrote: “Oh, look, they bought it cheaply; we would have paid more.” It’s disappointing to hear talk along the lines of mercantile frustration that something escaped your grasp. After all culture, art, is a world in which far from everything is measured in financial terms. There are things more interesting than money.

How much is it costing, why so much, and who else wanted to buy? Such questions should not obscure, for example, the building of the Exchange, which we have saved in the most splendid manner when it was in a parlous state. We are turning it into a very interesting museum of heraldry and historical glory that we showed to the President. Yet all people ask us is “When will it be finished?” “When it is,” we usually reply.

This material was published in the federal edition of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper No2 (9244) on 10 January 2024.