Revolutionary Conservation and the Evolution of Conservatism: I. E. Grabar and the Design of Socialist Monument Protection Policy in the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic

ABSTRACT

This article presents the formulation of socialist conservation policy under Soviet regimes. It shows how, with the realization of the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist doctrine, a specific attitude toward the preservation of artistic monuments and cultural heritage emerged and how it changed in the course of the great historical ruptures leading up to the disintegration of ‘real socialism’. Special attention is paid to the work of Igor Emanuelovich Grabar, who had a central influence on Soviet monument preservation as a whole. The article presents the problems of formation of a specifically socialist conception of monument preservation, which began with the first socialist revolution at the beginning of the last century and influenced other countries under the rule of communist parties.

KEYWORDS:

• Conservation
• monument conservation
• communism
• socialism
• Soviet Union
• Igor Grabar

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 For an overview of the development of the arts in the period spanning from the October revolution until the Cultural revolution (1917–1932), with a focus on how the pre-revolutionary artistic credo has been rejected, see J. E. Bowlt, 1971.

2 Mir iskusstva (Мир иску́сства, World of Art) was a Russian magazine and also the artistic movement it inspired and embodied, which was a major influence on the Russians who helped revolutionize European art during the first decade of the twentieth century.

3 Zhukov 1989, 146, 175, cited in Cvetkovski 2017, 455.

4 For an in-depth look on the early period of Grabar's work and the crucial factors in his formative years cf. Roslavskiy 2004. The perspective on Grabar from the inner circle of his family can be found in Grabar and Ossovskij 2005, later incorporated in Grabar 2008. On the importance of his early expeditions to the Russian north which was crucial for his later work, cf. Grabar 2022. Reminiscences on the early period of his life represent the bulk of his autobiography: Grabar 2001. The collection of his letters spanning his whole life was published in three volumes as Grabar 1975-1983.

5 Grabar 1926, 91. This article presents the most explicit thematization and comparison of the parallel between the Soviet and Western approaches. In essence, Grabar was explicit that he ‘stands on the same position as it was opposed by the English to the French’, not allowing any imaginative additions, with the sole aim of ‘revealing the monument beneath the layers, and only of those layers that do not have their proper historical-archeological value.’

6 Ibid. The Russian term for repair here is ‘remont’, as opposed to ‘restauracia’, which stands for restoration.

7 For an example of an in-depth art-historical analysis as a necessary precursory step of identification and evalutation for work on conservation and restoration cf. Grabar 1926, 3–5.

8 For more details about the general situation relating to heritage in the transitional periods in the Soviet epoch, cf. the anthology edited by Shenkov 2004, which offers separate studies on particular stages (with essays covering three main epochs: 1917-1941, 1940-1960s, 1970s-1980s). For a focus on comparison of restoration and conservation approaches in other republics besides Russia cf. pages 440–468 and 542–584 and 612-638.

9 Ibid., 180. It’s important to note that such destructive reconstructions of the city as a whole were mostly limited to Moscow and the plan of Lazar Kaganovich and Nikita Khruschev in the 1930s to impose a socialist look on the capital, while other cities like Leningrad, Novgorod, and Pskov were not as radically transformed from their historical appearance (Schmidt 1990, 351).

10 All-Russian Research and Restoration Centre: History (http://www.grabar.ru/about_us/history/ index.php).

11 For more details on Grabar as an artist, see Kruglov 2008.

12 RGANI [Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii], (RGANI-5, 35; 26) in Demchenko 2011.

13 Ibid., pp. 65-68. The central decree of the Stalin era concerning monuments was the Statute on the Protection of Monuments of Culture of 1948 which provided general principles on which each republic was to issue its own instruction. The post-Khrushchev changes were shaped by the All-Russian Voluntary Society for the Protection of Ancient Historical and Cultural Monuments of 1966 and similar societies in other republics. The final replacement of Stalinist principles occurred in 1976 with On the Protection and Use of Monuments of History and Culture which declared that ‘in the USSR monuments of history and culture are the property of the people. The Soviet state, following Leninist principles of relations toward the cultural geritage, creates all the conditions for the preservation and efficient use of the monuents in the interests of Communist construction.’ (Ferdinand Joseph Maria Feldbrugge, ‘Monuments’ in Feldbrugge, Van den Berg, and Simons 1985, 521).

14 Scientific restoration centre I. Grabar. Commercial examination in the center of Grabar Workshop. 4 July 2020 https://moscsp.ru/kommercheskaya-ekspertiza-v-centre-grabarya-vserossiiskii.html (accessed 28 August 2021).