The national cultural heritage register of Russia () is a registry of historically or culturally significant man-made immovable properties – landmark buildings, industrial facilities, memorial homes of notable people of the past, monuments, cemeteries and tombs, archaeological sites and cultural landscapes – man-made environments and natural habitats significantly altered by humans. The register continues a tradition established in 1947 and is governed by a 2002 law "On the objects of cultural heritage (monuments of culture and history)" (Law 73-FZ). The register is maintained by the Federal Service for Monitoring Compliance with Cultural Heritage Legislation (a branch of the federal Ministry of Culture); the publicly available online database is hosted by the Ministry of Culture. Its primary purpose is to aggregate the regional heritage registers maintained by the federal subjects of Russia, monitor the state of heritage objects and compliance with relevant laws.
The legal framework of the register, as of May 2009, remains incomplete and the register itself is not yet matched to lists of protected buildings maintained by regional and municipal authorities. It includes around 100,000 items while the local lists total in excess of 140,000. Of these 42,000 are rated as national landmarks, while the rest are of regional or local significance. The Ministry of Culture admits that many items on the registers have been destroyed.
Natural landmarks and reserves (apart from cultural landscapes), movable art, archives, museum and library collections are not part of the register and are governed by different laws and agencies.A roundup of legislation on different preservation topics is provided in: A different listing, State Code of Particularly Valuable Objects of Cultural Heritage of the Peoples of the Russian Federation,English translation as in created in 1992, includes the most conspicuous man-made landmarks as well as operating institutions: museums, archives, theatres, universities and academies.
Background
Early records (1805–1861)
Local heritage registers in the Russian Empire extend to 1805, when Alexander I demanded state protection of archaeological sites on the recently conquered Black Sea coast., ironically remarks that the greatest neoclassical architects of the last quarter of 18th century, Vasily Bazhenov and Matvey Kazakov, did not suffer from a "consuming passion for preservation" and boldly cleared anything that stood in their way. Thus Alexander's 1805 decree actually predated the preservation movement among professionals. These Greek, Genoan and Tatar relics in sparsely populated steppes were regularly looted by treasure hunters. In 1821 minister Alexander Golitsyn limited the scope of protection to Greek and Genoan heritage and denied protection to Tatar and Ottoman buildings. Requirements for a scientific heritage register were formulated in 1823 by Ivan Stempkovsky and enforced by governor Vorontsov.
In 1826, emperor Nicholas I decreed compilation of Russia's first nationwide register of architectural "antiquities". The decree prohibited demolition of historical "castles, fortresses and other ancient buildings", imposed local governors' responsibility for their preservation and required them to compile lists of notable local properties, backed by archive research and where qualified architects were available, by proper architectural drawings of their facades and floorplans. Churches were omitted from the decree, – Nicholas at that time did not want to interfere with clergy; a similar but less strict decree on religious heritage was issued in 1828.
Nicholas did not explain what, specifically, constituted protected buildings, so initial responses from the provinces listed both pre-petrine buildings and contemporary neoclassical landmarks. Within the 1830s official and public understanding of "antiquities" was narrowed to Russia's "indigenous" art of pre-petrine periods; baroque and neoclassicism of the 18th century, regarded as recent foreign influence, were exempt. Recognition of these styles as national heritage did not occur until the Russian neoclassical revival of the early 1900s.
The first regional register (album) of listed buildings was published in 1830 in Novgorod (including relics of Belozersk). In 1839 Andrey Glagolev published "Russian Fortresses", in 1844–1846 Ivan Pushkarev published four volumes on Northern Russian heritage. Professional studies of ancient architecture did not gain momentum until the 1840s, when the country accumulated a critical mass of architects trained in restoration projects in Italy and France at the expense of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Materials on Kievan Rus relics collected in the 1820s–1834, compiled by Konstantin Thon,Thon already had a wide experience in restoration; he lived in Italy and France in 1819–1829 and was awarded membership in Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze and Accademia di San Luca for actual restoration work – contributed to the formulation of the official Russo-Byzantine style of the 1830s–1850s. Eventually the compilation duties were delegated to the Russian ArchaeologicalIn the 19th-century Russian language archaeology included studies of any historical artifacts, including quite recent, extant, operational buildings. Society, established in 1846–1849.
The building code of 1857 separated responsibility for preservation of historical buildings (17th century and earlier) depending on property type. State properties were now governed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, with restoration financed by local taxes. Restoration of urban churches had to be approved by the Holy Synod, restoration of rural churches by local bishop, with prior consent of a civilian city architect. Private properties remained largely unregulated.There weren't many private properties dating back to pre-Petrine times and those that were positively identified as "ancient" were rarely deemed valuable enough. An Imperial Archeological Commission, established in 1859, was tasked with maintenance of the register; however, it was never adequately financed.
Societies and Commissions (1861–1917)
During the reign of Alexander II (1856–1881) the dominant policy shifted from preservation of buildings to recreation of their perceived, frequently fictional, "original" looks. The change was influenced by Western European experience, particularly works by Jonathan Smith and Viollet-le-Duc, as well as domestic political unrest. After the 1863 uprising in Poland Alexander launched a campaign of reintroducing Orthodoxy into Western provinces, including restoration of ruined Orthodox churches. To help formulate the new canon, Grigory Gagarin (vice-president of the Archaeological Society) instituted a special commission for "the studies of Russian and Orthodox in general, monuments of the Western Territory". In less than ten years the commission catalogued the Orthodox heritage of western Ukraine, Lithuania and Congress Poland, paying special attention to churches initially built as Orthodox and later converted to Catholicism; these were repossessed and eventually rebuilt to Orthodox canon.
In the second half of the 1860s Gagarin and count Alexey Uvarov solved the problem of managing the national register; in particular, Uvarov is credited with establishment of the non-governmental (1869), a professional institution that literally "kept the nation's records" and was the public watchdog for preservation until the October Revolution. It tried to secure an exclusive right to approve or veto any changes to listed buildings, but failed; in 1874 these rights were granted to an Imperial Commission composed of members of Archaeological Societies, the Holy Synod, Russian Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Arts. In the same year the state finally formulated the legal meaning of architectural landmark and ensured equal protection for church and civil properties.
The register compiled by Archaeological Societies was augmented by regional catalogues published by amateurs such as Nikolay Naidenov, author of the four-volume "Moscow Cathedrals, Monasteries and Churches" (1883–1888). 2008 reissue: Amateurs were not bound by the official borderline between "antiquities" and modernity and thus preserved all-inclusive snapshots of their period. In the 1890s protection was gradually extended to selected buildings of the 18th century, however, their classification as heritage remained debatable until the 1900s. Late 18th and 19th century Empire style buildings were placed on the register shortly before World War I through the efforts of Ivan Mashkov, Ilya Bondarenko of Moscow Architectural Society and the Saint Petersburg school of Russian neoclassical revival.
Denial of heritage (1917–1941)
In the years immediately after the October Revolution, the Bolshevik administration had not yet forged its policy on culture; it was outwardly hostile to religion and "upper" classes, at the same time allowing preservationists to have a say in daily life of Soviet cities. The same person, Vladimir Lenin, decreed destruction of tsarist monuments and removal of church properties and at the same time authorized maintenance of cultural heritage registers. In the early 1920s the government supported conversion of significant historical buildings into public museums. Notable preservationists like Petr Baranovsky, Ilya Bondarenko and Petr SytinBaranovsky supervised a museum based in Boldino Monastery (Smolensk Oblast); Bondarenko – a museum based in private manor in Ufa; Sytin – a museum in Moscow's Sukharev Tower, carefully restored in 1923–1925 – Scherbo. took over nationalized landmarks for museums of local "people's heritage" and managed to delay their destruction and keep the record of surviving local heritage.
However, in the second half of the 1920s, the policy reversed to outward denial of this heritage and shutting down "redundant" local museums. With the change in values imposed by communist ideology, the tradition of preservation was broken. Independent preservation societies, even those that defended only secular landmarks such as Moscow-based OIRU were disbanded by the end of the 1920s.OIRU ceased to exist in 1930, their last publication was issued in 1929 – A new anti-religious campaign, launched in 1929, coincided with collectivization of peasants; destruction of churches in the cities peaked around 1932.
The rise of Stalinist architecture had dual consequences. On one hand, gigantic reconstruction plans demanded demolition of anything caught in the way. In Moscow, the new plans resulted in reducing the heritage register from 474 items in 1925 to just 74 in 1935; national RSFSR register shrunk from over 3,000 to 1,200. The establishment of the Academy of Architecture marginally improved attitudes towards the national heritage; the academy provided a new forum for preservationists. In 1940 the academy compiled its own list of top-priority landmarks and assessed the damages, but comprehensive national or even regional heritage registers did not reappear until after World War II. The few landmarks set aside by the planners of the 1930s remained protected and restored until the German invasion.
Post-war recovery (1945–1959)
Losses of World War II, conservatively estimated at 3,000 landmarks,The number, compiled by the Ministry of Culture, includes losses of Ukraine and Belarus – Schmidt 1990, p. 352 and a wartime shift in favor of nationalist ideology raised the politicians' attention to the problems of surviving national heritage. In 1947 Council of Ministers of the RSFSR approved the new comprehensive list of more than 600 top priority buildings and ensembles. Detailed legal instruction on recordkeeping and protection followed in 1948.