The territory of the Arkhangelskoye Museum-Estate was approved in 2001 - it covers all the historical property at the beginning of the 18th century, i.e. in addition to the palace itself with a parterre, it included the Gonzago Theater with the surrounding landscape park and a cascade of ponds, as well as the landscapes of the Moskva River valley. In total, this is 657 hectares, and together with the protected zones - all 800. However, local authorities prefer to believe that Arkhangelskoye is exhausted by the territory behind the fence of the military sanatorium. The latter has existed on the territory of the estate since 1933, but its borders, according to Evgeny Sosedov, deputy chairman of the council of the Moscow regional department of VOOPIiK, are quite random. The processes of allocating protected land for building over these 10 years have gone so far that the central core of the ensemble was in a ring of plots that no longer belong to it. Especially active cottage construction is approaching the estate on the other side of the Ilyinsky highway - from the upper Goryatinsky pond on the territory of the sanatorium, for example, new houses are literally a few meters away. The ruins of the Yusupov porcelain factory with the adjacent land were also leased. The landscape part of the Arkhangelsk Park, by the way, refers, like others to it, to the lands of the forest fund, which simplifies manipulation with it. Now, for example, on the Internet, it is freely offered to rent land "overlooking the Gonzago Theater" with the possibility of 10% of the development - the park is supposedly rented out exclusively for its improvement.
All these years, the defenders of the estate have been conducting legal proceedings with the developers. According to Evgeny Sosedov, they managed to win 10 ships, cancel 5 lease agreements and many more decisions of local authorities that threaten the park. And just recently, a very alarming signal came from the same court: the arbitration court unexpectedly recognized the lease agreements for 3 sites around the Gonzago Theater with the possibility of capital construction on them. Who exactly is behind these sites is unknown, but popular rumor attributes them to the powerful Viktor Vekselberg. On June 20, the defenders of the estate will face an appeal court. However, many of them no longer believe in success. Alexander Kudryavtsev, for example, believes that the process of "assimilation" of protected areas is already permanent and the pressure of those in power will always play a decisive role in it.
The only guarantor of the preservation of the ensemble could be the transfer of the entire territory due to it by law, more than 600 hectares, for unlimited use. But today this is no longer possible: since 2001, only one tenth has been assigned to Arkhangelskoe, i.e. the territory bounded by the fence of the sanatorium, and in the protected zones, several hundred owners have already privatized their plots. The Krasnogorsk authorities, for their part, are strenuously "pushing" projects for adjusting the protected zones, so that the estate is limited to its 62 hectares. The rest of the protected areas are proposed to be reduced to zones of regulated development with a permissible construction of 10-12 floors! Heritage defenders are convinced that with such a turn of events, every possibility of developing the estate complex into a world-class museum and tourist center can be buried. Meanwhile, according to Evgeny Sosedov, the Board of Trustees has repeatedly considered projects for the complex development of the estate with the construction of a museum infrastructure, restoration of the ruins of a porcelain factory, etc., developed by order of the museum. These projects received all sorts of approvals, but then rested on the "land issue". Things have already reached the point that today the museum does not have territorial resources even to organize parking. The only thing that can still be hoped for, Yevgeny Sosedov believes, is the sites of the Ministry of Defense, which, however, is still resisting transferring them for the development of the museum-estate.
On June 4 and 5, activists collected signatures in defense of the monument from visitors to the popular Jazz Estate festival in Arkhangelskoye. They will be sent along with a protest letter to the President of the Russian Federation. The success of the event, of course, is questionable: as Yevgeny Sosedov noted, dozens of similar appeals have already been written, and they were addressed to the most different levels of government and all went safely to local officials. The coordinator of "Arkhnadzor" Konstantin Mikhailov considers publicity and bringing specific persons to justice as the most effective method of fighting for the estate. There is no need to rely on interest from above - the process of formalizing the protected status of estate territories, it turns out, has been dragging on since 1955, but all these years no one at the top was simply interested in it and is unlikely to be interested now.
