Transfer offer – Newspaper Kommersant No. 165 (7366) dated 09/08/2022

In the session that has begun, the Duma, among other things, should deal with issues of the integrity of the collection of Russian museums. Initially, the government introduced a package of amendments to the laws on museums, but then the Russian Orthodox Church proposed its own amendments in addition to them. They are designed to streamline the procedure for the transfer of museum values ​​to religious organizations, and in the future, probably, to make this transfer mass.

The federal law “On the Transfer to Religious Organizations of Religious Property in State or Municipal Ownership”, adopted in November 2010, does not apply to “religious property” that is part of the Museum Fund of the Russian Federation. From the point of view of the current legislation, icons stored in state museums (as well as all other works of art) are not subject to alienation from state property. Formally, they can only be transferred for free use, including to a religious organization (either for a clearly defined time, or for the period of existence of this organization – read, forever).

Such transmissions took place throughout the post-Soviet period. So far, they are regulated by the government decree “On the procedure for transferring to religious organizations federally owned property for religious purposes, classified as museum objects and museum collections …”. The decree, adopted in 2001 and revised many times since then, implies that the transfer must take place on the basis of an agreement that a particular museum concludes with the corresponding temple or monastery, but the Ministry of Culture makes a formal decision on the transfer (or refusal).

The document, however, clarifies that it is the religious organization that, in such a transfer, is obliged to provide “an appropriate regime of safety and security.” And if the regime is not observed, then this becomes the basis for the early termination of the contract (and the return of the monument to the museum, respectively).

In addition, a government decree is a subordinate act. Abbess Xenia (Chernega), who heads the legal department of the Moscow Patriarchate, pointed out to Kommersant “abuses” when museums refuse to give out valuables from their collections to religious organizations “under the pretext of the lack of relevant norms in federal law.” With the adoption of new amendments, everything will obviously change: museums will no longer be able to refuse transfer under such a pretext, but in terms of possible damage to monuments, they will be extreme. Yes, they say, the conditions in the existing temples can be unfavorable, but you really have to make sure that everything is in order, that’s why you are specialists, that’s what “operational management” remains for you.

Everyone is well aware of the excesses that can arise in this case. Back in 1993, the Bogolyubskaya icon of the Mother of God, painted in the 12th century, was transferred from the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum to the Assumption Knyaginin Monastery, a monument of the pre-Mongolian period, of which terribly few have come down to us. In 2009, it was discovered that the icon was in a monstrous condition: both the board and the paint layer were thoroughly affected by mold; along the way, it turned out that the monastery systematically violated the recommendations on storage conditions. Bogolyubskaya was restored for several years, miraculously saved, but it still remains too vulnerable – all this time neither the museum public nor the faithful can see it.

The old (often also made up of several boards) wooden base and the remains of the original paint layer extracted from later recordings are desperately fragile, capricious, unpredictable matters. An icon can feel quite comfortable in a stable museum microclimate. But to move a medieval monument from such an environment to the conditions of an average active temple (candles, drafts, temperature and humidity changes) and expect nothing to happen to it is rather what Scripture warns against with the words “do not tempt the Lord thy God.” Of course, it is possible (and there are examples of this) to create a special isolated showcase that would independently maintain the necessary temperature and climate indicators inside, no matter what happens outside. The difficulty is that such showcases are piecework, they should be developed in a good way according to the parameters of a particular monument. At the same time, they are very expensive, technologically demanding, and their reckless in-line production is hardly possible – this is not a car.

And by no means did museum workers come up with the idea that an icon can decay and collapse, and sometimes irreversibly. Once upon a time, a paint layer damaged from old age could simply be sanded off with pumice stone – and the icon would be repainted. Or let the image that has fallen into disrepair on the water. Or bury him in the ground, like a dead person. Or even burn it – back in the 7th century, Leonty of Cyprus, arguing with iconoclasts, wrote: “We do not worship the images and icons of saints as gods. For if we worshiped the tree of the icon as God, then, of course, we would worship the rest of the trees and would not burn the icons, as often happens when the image is blotted out.

But mores are changing. If not for secular scientists, the same Rublev’s “Trinity” would not have become a world-famous masterpiece of “speculation in colors” and a symbol of Eastern Christian spirituality. In the same way, by the way, it was modern research that created the exceptional reputation of Hodegetria Toropetskaya from the Russian Museum, which after that, in 2009, was transferred to the temple of the Prince’s Lake cottage village near Moscow, as if temporarily, and so they left it there, having removed it from museum inventory.

And no, the attitude towards ancient icon-painting monuments as something requiring museum care and museum storage is not at all a godless phenomenon of the post-revolutionary period. Back in the 19th century, with these considerations, diocesan ancient repositories began to be created, but old and valuable icons from churches were transferred to state museums long before October. So, Nicholas II, having visited the shrines of Suzdal in 1913, ordered to transfer several dozen icons from the Intercession Monastery to the same Russian Museum. Including three large icons that were in the monastery cathedral. And in order to compensate the monastery for this transfer, by order of the emperor, exact copies of three images were written – a decision that is not only sound from a secular point of view, but in fact also fits perfectly into tradition. Here is the thousand-year experience of copying miraculous icons “in measure and likeness”, and, in fact, the dogmatic foundation of Orthodox icon veneration – the belief that this veneration should not be directed to a specific board and not to paints, but to the prototype.

The three post-Soviet decades also show that it is impossible to act on these issues without the will to find reasonable and mutually acceptable solutions. Most importantly, there are such solutions and there are non-conflict situations. The Moscow Church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi, both a functioning church and part of the exposition of the Tretyakov Gallery, where, with appropriate precautions, museum works are placed, headed by the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir. An ancient icon of the Tolga Mother of God, safely staying (with museum supervision) in the Yaroslavl Tolga Monastery for almost twenty years. The Novgorod St. Sophia Cathedral was handed over to the church in 1991, where fresco and icon-painting treasures of national and world significance are tactfully guarded. The Don Icon of the Mother of God, which is annually delivered from the Tretyakov Gallery to the services at the Donskoy Monastery. All these are different cases with individual circumstances, where a lot depends on the condition of a particular monument or monuments, on discretion, on readiness for a meaningful compromise, on a conscious “do no harm”. But only in this way, obviously, in such things a satisfactory result is achieved. Trying to achieve it by campaigning with explicit or implicit administrative coercion is not justice, but a caricature of it, evil, not very pious, and certainly not humane.

Sergei Khodnev