The death of David Sargsyan was, without exaggeration, a shock for everyone. This loss seemed unfair and implausible - it was in no way believed that such a public, bright and talented person could suddenly leave like that. “He just disappeared,” as Grigory Revzin wrote in one of the best articles, which is now more often quoted in blogs. One after another, the media, whose journalists were personally acquainted with him, responded to the death of David Sargsyan: Grigory Zaslavsky in RIA Novosti, Anatoly Belov on the walkingcity.ru portal, Lara Kopylova in the ECA magazine. In the memoirs of friends and colleagues, the personality of David Sargsyan is revealed from various angles. According to Yuri Avvakumov, this man was able to turn "dry museum life into fireworks." He made this "quietest", "black and white" museum a center for the preservation of old Moscow, writes Grigory Revzin. Rustam Rakhmatullin in Izvestia and Sergei Khachaturov in Vremya Novostey also recall Sarkisian's protective activities as director of the museum, noting the special role of David Ashotovich in preserving the famous Melnikov house and his participation in the defense of old Moscow as a whole. David Sargsyan was buried today, and today two more articles appeared - by Evgeny Nasyrov about farewell and Larisa Ivanova-Veen about the future of the museum, about the fact that in the last years of his life the director wanted to see Natalia Dushkina as his successor.
Another sad news, more precisely the development of a sad tendency, which intensified even in the late autumn of the last year, was fires in architectural monuments, as well as in historical places. By a strange accident, for some reason, as a rule, someone pretends to burn buildings in order to expand, enlarge, in a word, make a monument (or not a monument) more beautiful, larger, newer, better than it was. The latest article by Rustam Rakhmatullin in Izvestia is about the tendency.
It is not clear yet about the so-called "Muromtsev's dacha", which was only claimed to be a parking lot for municipal transport. "Dacha" burned down on the night of January 2–3. The first to react to the fire was "Regnum" - information to the journalists came from the activists of "Arkhnadzor", who were on duty in the ashes. A couple of days later, the media were already talking loudly about the trend of “arson”, which, as you know, intensified at the end of last year. Recall that in the fall, Bykov's house and Guryev's chambers burned down in a similar way. For the sake of fairness, it must be said that the burnt down "Muromtsev's dacha" not only was not an architectural monument, but could hardly have become such. It was a wooden two-story barrack, built in the 1960s on the site of the summer residence of the first chairman of the Tsarist State Duma, Sergei Muromtsev; before that, there were several other barracks in the same place, successively replacing each other in the 1930s and 1940s. However, if you look at the images of a real, lost dacha, it is easy to see that it was also a large two-story house. It cannot be ruled out that some of the logs from that log house remained and migrated to later buildings. But the point, of course, is not in the logs, not even in the dacha and not in the remains of the park around.
The fact is that - surprisingly - in the middle of Moscow, people managed to exist in a wooden house, these people loved their house so much that they did not seek to move to a new panel building for convenience, but carried water from a pump. They studied the history of the place and set up a museum in the house, they knew that Ivan Bunin had been to the dacha, and Venedikt Erofeev had been to the Soviet house. The house has become a place for literary gatherings and even "readings" - small conferences. It was an enclave of non-typical Moscow life (although what to mean by the definition of "Moscow" is still a question). The sad thing is that looking at this story, one thinks that such enclaves of life consecrated by love are practically impossible to preserve in our city; that panel leveling, or concrete leveling for the rich, becomes such an inevitability; that it is difficult to live differently than everyone else. It is sad that no cultural flair and no journalistic articles and bloggers' records can resist destruction; this doom is unpleasant. And the status of the monument, or its absence, is not so important, much more important are the people whose house firemen stop extinguishing, as many media say, after the arrival of an official who whispered something in someone's ear. And it's even worse when a house with a one-year-old child is set on fire. Details are in the articles of Gazeta, which has been following the events since January 4. The most detailed materials appeared in Novaya Gazeta and Chastny Correspondent. Now the fire victims, and along with them the activists of "Arkhnadzor", sympathizers and journalists are waiting for the arrival of construction equipment and police: the house, despite the willingness of volunteers to restore it, promised to be demolished on January 11.
On holidays (it would seem, why hurry?), Another non-monument was demolished - technical school No. 55 on Khitrovskaya Square. And here it is also not in the status of the demolished building, but in the fact that in its place the company "DON-Stroy" is planning to build a business center (the project has been known for about a year, and the whole story has been going on for several years), whose voluminous buildings threaten to invade the historical atmosphere of Khitrovka, which is recognized as a newly discovered heritage site, a "sightseeing place" - which makes any construction work illegal on its territory. The first media outlets to report the demolition were Gazeta and Rosbalt. The "Vesti" program devoted to the confrontation between the residents of Khitrovka and the developer.
But if we talk about monuments - at the same time in the city of Sestroretsk, Leningrad Region, a real wooden Art Nouveau was burned down, one of the last, if not the last, in the city. But there is only one note about this.
Another high-profile news in early January was the decision of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to completely transfer the Novodevichy Convent from federal ownership to the Russian Orthodox Church. And although, as the representatives of the church promise, now in the monastery, "the principle of cooperation will be implemented," allowing museum specialists to control the state of the unique premises and iconostases, the management of the State Historical Museum, whose branch is Novodevichy, is seriously concerned about the future fate of this historical monument. Kommersant writes about this in detail. The state of the architectural monuments of the monastery itself is described in detail in the article of the Internet resource "Tatiana's Day". The news provoked a new round of discussion around the law on the restitution of church values - on January 13, the government commission considered its new version, according to which both federal and regional property could be transferred to the church. For details, see the Kommersant newspaper.
In the light of the story with the Novodevichy Convent, the clergy of the northern capital also revived. Literally the next day after Vladimir Putin's statement, the Holy Trinity Alexander Nevsky Lavra made a statement about the need to return the patronal church to her, which is now under the jurisdiction of the Museum of Urban Sculpture. Write about this "RIA Novosti".
In other words, for the defenders of the architectural heritage, the year began with more than anxiety. Looking at all the new reports about demolitions and fires, one involuntarily thinks that, despite the crisis, investors are not going to retreat even in scandalous situations, and the authorities are not very willing to cooperate with the cultural community. The topic of restitution of religious buildings that has received a new impetus, in turn, leaves open the question of at whose expense and how they will now be restored, and most importantly, whether the museum community will be able to exercise control over the monuments. So, the recent days of the holidays, alas, cannot be called either calm or joyful.
