Culture was washed away: historical sites and museum exhibits became victims of floods in Russia
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It’s time to develop a flood plan for cultural sites
Along with the spring, floods hit Russia, from which a number of regions are seriously suffering. The flood situation largely affected ordinary people, but historical buildings and museum objects are also under threat. We tell you where and how valuable exhibits are saved, and where they drown.
After a dam broke in Orsk, Orenburg region, on April 5 due to flooding, thousands of people lost their homes, and an evacuation was announced in the city. Experts predict the peak of the flood on April 10. The Old Town, a historical district of Orsk, built up with houses of the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, also found itself in the flood zone. It was at that time that the unique architectural appearance of the city was created. In the area there is also a separate cultural and museum center “Old Town”, located in the former estate of the merchant Muzafar Shakhpulatov (built in 1865), which tells about the historical center. Its fate is unknown, like other architectural and historical monuments, and there are more than a hundred of them in the city (we are talking about those that have the status of protected objects, but there are historical buildings without it).
It is not yet clear what happened to the Taras Shevchenko Museum, where the poet once lived, who served as a recruit in Orsk in 1847 (essentially it was an exile because of the poem “The Dream”, where Shevchenko condemned the policies of Emperor Nicholas I; during his service he was forbidden to write and draw). In 1986, a museum was created in the house, which is also in the Old Town. It was recently reconstructed – the top officials of the region opened the updated museum. Now it will probably have to be renovated again. And not only this museum, but the whole city. Now the situation in Orsk is so difficult that they don’t have time to think about the problem with cultural heritage.
By the way, in Orsk and near the city there are more than 40 archaeological monuments: settlements, burial mounds, single mounds. They are widely known in the scientific world. Among them are the Kumak burial ground of the Bronze Age and a “romantic” burial in the Belyaevka area (70 km from the city), where the bodies of the buried are folded in the shape of a heart, facing each other, with their knees bent. In another Iron Age mound (VI–VII centuries BC), an Egyptian vessel with the name of the Achaemenid king (Ancient Persia) Artaxerxes I was discovered. Many mounds have not yet been explored, but are of serious interest to the scientific world. Perhaps some of them were washed away. Archaeologists will likely have a lot of work to do when the water recedes.
The flood is already approaching Orenburg: on the morning of April 9, an alarm was declared there. Sirens call for people to evacuate. It is reported that around noon, employees of the Orenburg Regional Museum of Fine Arts, which occupies a building built in 1814, were evacuated. It is a cultural monument of the 19th century. The exhibition includes paintings by Aivazovsky, Shishkin, Savrasov and other famous masters. The museum has a large collection of paintings by naive artists of the Orenburg region – more than 400 works from the 1950s to the beginning of the 21st century. Nothing is known yet about the evacuation of the exhibits. Employees of all departments left the building and went home. There is no news yet about other cultural sites in Orenburg, and there are hundreds of them in the city.
But in the Kurgan region, the preventive evacuation of museum valuables is already in full swing. “Due to the current situation with flooding in the region and the introduced state of emergency, the House-Museum of the Decembrists, the House-Museum of V.K. Kuchelbecker and the Museum of the History of the City are temporarily stopping their work. The remaining museums are operating in a limited mode,” reports the Kurgan Regional Museum Association. According to preliminary data, more than 4.3 thousand houses with a total population of 19 thousand people may be in the flood zone in the region, the Ministry of Emergency Situations reports. On April 5, a high alert regime was introduced in the region due to possible flooding. They’re getting ready there.
Floods also reached the Moscow region. The Pride Land park, where wild cats live (lions, tigers, lynxes, leopards, jaguars and servals), as well as bears, camels, raccoons, and wolves, was flooded. Animal artists often come here to paint animals from life. 70% of the park’s territory is under water; employees are pumping out the water and evacuating the animals on their own.
As practice shows, despite annual floods, some regions are ready for them, others are not. It’s time to develop an action plan for cultural sites in case of such emergencies.
Newspaper headline:
Culture washed away
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