Interview with Andrei Batalov, Director of the Kremlin Museums

Over the last century, government policies toward preservation in the capital have been less than consistent. Andrei Batalov, Deputy Director of the Kremlin Museums, described the changes in an interview with Russian Life.

1918 – 1928

After the revolution, the architectural community was torn apart, but some specialists were still working individually, since architects as professionals could not be easily replaced from the top-down, like poets or painters. So, in the 1920s, traditions were maintained. The Bolsheviks had a concept of “museifying” Moscow: some monuments and buildings would be destroyed, but most would be preserved in a lifeless form. The conflict of bourgeois and socialist culture, one of the new concepts, created a struggle between the Bolsheviks and the professional architect community. 

1929 – 1940

The two trends of secularization and museification of old architecture began to clash in the late 1920s. Churches and monasteries turned into unnecessary reminders of a bygone era. A period of destruction began in 1929 and continued for a decade. A church on Lubyanka was one of the first to be razed. The doctrine changes, Trotsky is exiled, and political changes affect the way Moscow was envisioned. Museification is no longer feasible. Between 1928 and 1933, many buildings were destroyed in the Kremlin: two monasteries, three churches, several monuments. The Kremlin is secularized and the last members of the church are driven out. In the 1930s, a “Mussolini-style” dictatorship was forming, and a cultural rupture with the past was part of the plan.

1940-1956

In 1940, the situation changes. Several books about Russian architecture are published. After the annexation of Belarus and Ukraine, imperial ambitions call for an imperial identity, a return to the imperial cultural heritage. Churches start working again. A wave of patriotism also affects architecture and restoration. After the war, this new wave inspires post-war restoration, and the school of architectural restoration is reborn.

1956-1964

During the Khrushchev era, there is a relapse to the late 1920s: churches are closed again. An intentional rupture with the cultural past leads to more wreckage in the Kremlin: the old Armory was destroyed and the Palace of Congresses built in its place. Religious monuments were wrecked, closed, or converted into warehouses. Khrushchev was trying to obliterate religion in general, with disastrous effects for Russian culture and architectural heritage, which is closely tied to the Russian Orthodox Church.

1964-1985

The Brezhnev era was a period of calm and silence. The Soviet restoration school flourished; restoration became a respectable profession, sometimes paying better than architecture. After the 1980 Moscow Olympics, very few new notable structures were built in Moscow; in the 1980s there was no money for new construction – the country was about to go broke. 

1985-Present

The restoration school was unable to survive perestroika. State organizations broke up and the profession is no longer popular. It is now more profitable to design interiors for the rich rather than professionally restore old monuments.

Pre-revolutionary images (clockwise from top left): Lubyanka square, looking towards the Kremlin; Nikolskaya street, once a busy market street; Pokrovka street.