For less than a year of its existence, "Arkhnadzor" has achieved enviable success, despite the fact that the monuments have to be won from the enemy, not only a strong one, but also constantly striving to evade responsibility. These successes can be judged by comparing materials from last year's exhibition "Demolition Cannot Be Restored" (organized jointly by the site "Moscow, which does not exist" and the project "Against Scrap") and its current sequel "Losing cannot be saved". During 2009, the united movement, according to the coordinator Konstantin Mikhailov, managed to defend a number of addresses, at least on paper. Why on paper? Because the work on the physical restoration of the monuments has not yet begun, but activists have already been able to save them from the demolition. Therefore, the photographs included in the exposition make a rather sad impression - everywhere collapsing houses with eye sockets of broken windows and only some of them are covered with a building net - but from their captions one can learn about the prevented demolitions, the decisions taken on conservation, the restoration begun, etc. etc. We can only hope that all these works will actually be carried out. Unfortunately, while waiting for them, Arkhnadzor is forced to add to the list of potential exhibitors. New victims are constantly added to the previous monuments, and the most bitter loss of this year is the Bykov's house, which was burned down in the fall of 2009, built by Lev Kekushev.
And yet the evening of December 9 in the Turgenev library-reading room passed on an optimistic note. The movement has finally found a permanent platform for its journalistic and educational activities, which, as coordinator Rustam Rakhmatullin hopes, will become for them no less, and perhaps even more important, than writing protest letters and preparing amendments to existing legislation. Rakhmatullin is sure that Arkhnadzor settled in the Turgenev library not by chance, the place itself, according to him, is metaphysically connected with all the previous activities of the association. Not far away, for example, is the estate of Loris-Melikov of the All-Russian Cultural Foundation, where the constituent congress of "Arkhnadzor" was held. And the Sretensky Hill itself is almost the center of Moscow within the boundaries of the Kamer-Kollezhsky Val and at the same time its highest point - very successful, according to Rakhmatullin, for symbolic patrol and observation. As for the building itself, this historic estate found a second life in 2004, when the collective of Alexander Asadov's workshop together with the restorers of the 13th workshop of Mosproekt-2 developed a very correct reconstruction project, which later deservedly became an example of the treatment of heritage. As the author of the restoration project Lidiya Shitova said at the opening of the club, the building already during the work on the project became an identified monument, when fragments of the decor of the 17th-18th centuries were found during measurements, but the architect readily agreed to redo the project and take into account the possibility of exhibiting them in the interior of the future library.
Arkhnadzor arranged the program of its evening in such a way that the guests had the opportunity to visit different rooms of the reading room, examine the monument from all sides and enjoy the cozy interiors of the estate. By the way, as the chairman of the "Old Moscow" society said at the evening, back in the late 1940s, it turns out that a society of lovers of Moscow history was formed in the library-reading room, from which many famous historians and scientists later emerged. The current club thus inherits this tradition and develops it, and working side by side with the "Old Moscow", founded in 1909 and resumed in the 1990s, actually increases its modest age by an order of magnitude.
The new format of the club will allow Arkhnadzor to cover a fairly wide area of knowledge about the heritage of Moscow, no longer limited to researching potential and past losses. The reading library will host scientific and literary and artistic meetings in four different genres: “persona” is a meeting with the classic of the genre, be it a historian, restorer or writer, “discoveries” will present the stories of specialists about the events in the restoration of capital monuments, “project”will unite discussions on ways of integrating historical buildings into the city environment and, finally, in the“guide”section, local history walks will be held. For example, on December 9, the club began its work with a speech by the writer, winner of the Big Book prize Andrei Baldin, whom Rustam Rakhmatullin asked to tell about the metaphysics of the book “Moscow. City portrait ". According to Baldin himself, this is actually not a children's book of drawings, but a kind of metaphysical "visualization of the physiognomy of Moscow", which the literary artist portrayed as a profile of a Russian woman facing the west. Its pupil is located on the Patriarch's Ponds, where, by the way, the key events of the two most famous novels about Moscow - "War and Peace" and "The Master and Margarita" take place. in the north, century after century, something high has been growing … Baldin generally has many such unusual observations, and all his books offer readers a new and fascinating look at the architectural history of the capital.
It seems that the secret of Arkhnadzor's own success is explained by the same willingness to constantly look at the problem of preserving the historical and cultural heritage with an open mind and with sincere interest. Arhnadzor attracts supporters by always telling and showing what exactly is the value of the story it defends. It is hardly possible to do this only in the language of legislative acts and dry press releases, and therefore the movement willingly masters "related" genres, such as exhibitions, carnival (an action against unauthorized construction on Rozhdestvensky Boulevard), a concert (in defense of the Synodal House), festivities in Moscow boulevards, gatherings (at Muromtsev's dacha), intellectual orientation and many others. All these actions, as well as a scrupulous study of the decisions of the Moscow government, yielded tangible results this fall, when a number of monuments were returned to the list of identified cultural objects and the implementation of the decree on the demolition of resettled residential buildings was suspended. Arkhnadzor plans to present the results of its activities for the expiring year in more detail at the end of December.
