Recall that at the beginning of the year the Moscow City Duma introduced a law “On monuments of history and culture in Moscow”, which should replace the law No. 26 “On the protection and use of immovable monuments of history and culture” that has been in force since 2000. There was no public discussion of the published concept of this law: in the several months allotted for discussion, only six responses came, however, among them there were also very solid and useful comments from MAPS and RAASN. Their quintessence was published in the second edition of the MAPS "Report", and on September 8 these provisions were once again voiced in the report of the coordinator of the public movement "ArchNadzor" Rustam Rakhmatullin, a member of the public working group on the improvement of city legislation in the field of heritage.
The roundtable participants unanimously acknowledged that the current 2000 law is good in itself, and the root of the problems lies not in its provisions and wording, but in how they are implemented in practice. Unfortunately, cases when certain sections of the law are interpreted not with a plus sign for the heritage protection system, but exactly the opposite, are very frequent. That is why the social activists sounded the bells, having prepared a list of proposals for the Moscow government in order to close those "holes" in the law through which, in the figurative expression of Rustam Rakhmatullin, "vandalism crawls out."
According to the members of MAPS and "ArchNadzor", it is necessary to start to edit the law from its conceptual provisions, and, in particular, write right in the preamble that all of Moscow is a historical city. The second basic point is to bring the city law in line with the federal one in terms of the concepts used, such as, for example, "a place of interest", "a valuable object of the environment" and others. Thus, the “subject of protection”, according to the deep conviction of the participants in the discussion, can only be the whole heritage object, but not separate parts of a building or ensemble. Otherwise, we have what we have - today the monuments are actually being "re-arranged" for the needs of the reconstruction project. As for the methodology for determining the "subject of protection", it could be established by a separate by-law. Another important concept that the participants in the discussion propose to include in the law is “urban space”. It includes everything that belongs to the townspeople free of charge and freely, namely the territories and courtyards of monuments, facades of objects located in the depths of the quarters, and so on. Giving these places a legal status will protect them from the arbitrariness of tenants and owners, who, as a rule, try to restrict access to them for city residents.
By the way, about the tenants. In order to encourage a respectable tenant who respects its security obligations and has carried out the restoration work in full, it is proposed to give him priority in the tender for the sale of monumental buildings. The same privileges can be received by the descendants of victims of confiscation of objects during the years of the revolution.
One of the key proposals for amending the Law of the City of Moscow on Historical and Cultural Monuments is to comprehensively spell out in this document all types of work prohibited at heritage sites. In other words, future owners should clearly know which actions are restoration and which are capital construction and reconstruction. Allowed works, for example, "adaptation", which often turn into the same capital construction, also require a clear definition. The Union of Ecological Organizations of Moscow, in turn, made a proposal to define the boundaries of the concept of "recreation" in order to avoid the construction in the city of something that has never actually existed in it. One of the levers of influence on the future owners of monuments should be technical expertise, which MAPS and ArchNadzor propose to carry out exclusively to the state: the tenant, user, owner must buy out the monument together with a package of expert opinion, in which all permitted at this facility are detailed and clearly spelled out. types of jobs.
In the section on the procedure for the privatization of monuments, the round table participants proposed to register a ban on the sale of parts of the whole ensemble, or the sale of a house by floors. And not only the primary one: the condition for the owner to re-sell the monument only in its entirety should become an encumbrance for the owner upon purchase. Otherwise, he will face the fate of the infamous Orlov-Denisov house, which, as Rustam Rakhmatullin said at the round table, was divided between three owners. In the existing list of objects prohibited for privatization, in addition to those already museumified, the meeting participants also proposed to include those where the museum is planned only in the future.
Boris Pasternak, the chief architect of the Center for Historical and Urban Planning Studies of Moscow, also drew attention to the existing practice of delaying the transfer of monuments to another tenant after terminating the contract with the previous owner. If this period is not regulated by law, then the buildings can stand ownerless for years, gradually coming into disrepair. In general, the threat of desolation of monuments, a direct road leading to demolition, could be fought, in Pasternak's opinion, by a reasonable use of state funds allocated for restoration. However, unfortunately, instead of preserving monuments and elementary replacement of leaking roofs, the authorities prefer to spend money on the restoration of the non-existent bell tower of the Great Ascension Church or on the construction of a wooden palace by Alexei Mikhailovich in Kolomenskoye, the recent opening of which for the City Day was reminded to the audience by Alexei Klimenko, a member of the Presidium of Expert -Advisory Public Council (ECOS).
By the way, the fate of ECOS itself also became the subject of heated discussion at the round table meeting. The fact is that not so long ago the provision on state historical and cultural expertise came into force, which actually leads to the abandonment of the system of expert councils and commissions, and Moscow, thus, is deprived of the system of public observers it needs. According to Boris Pasternak, the public must make every effort to prevent this from happening. Evgeny Bunimovich also supported this idea, who cited the recently created commission on sculptural monuments as a positive example of the work of the public council.
The session of the round table was summed up by Evgeny Bunimovich, who formulated the main reason for the de facto inaction of the law on monuments in Russia. According to the deputy, the main problem is that the concept of property prevails in our country over the phenomenon of cultural heritage. Perhaps the whole point is that both the existing encumbrances and penalties for their violation cost the owners of the monuments too cheap and therefore it seems profitable not to preserve the heritage object, but to acquire it into ownership with subsequent reconstruction. Obviously, in matters of heritage economics, we should more often turn to Western experience, and to the negative one too, Yevgeny Bunimovich is sure. One of the options, for example, could be a trust form for managing monuments, which Valentin Manturov, director of the National Center for Heritage Trusteeship, briefly spoke about at the round table.
All proposals on amendments to the law on monuments, voiced during the round table meeting, will be summarized by the working group in the very near future and drawn up into a resolution. Representatives of public organizations and the Moscow City Duma are unanimous in the opinion that it is not advisable to develop a new law on the protection of monuments - it is enough to improve the existing one. And the proximity of the October elections to the Moscow City Duma gives hope that the resolution prepared by MAPS can really influence the fate of this key document for the legacy sphere.
