The Russian government recently discussed the future of culturally and historically important buildings. It was faced with a choice: should they all be maintained at the expense of the state or should some of them be privatized and sold to private individuals?
The issue itself marks the end of an entire epoch.
Palaces were expropriated for considerations of propaganda after the Bolshevik Revolution. For example, the Soviet authorities established a Museum of Fine Arts and Sculpture in the building of the Imperial Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, while the Soviet government occupied the Kremlin. The luxurious Metropol and National hotels became living quarters for Party bureaucrats. The state took control of thousands of palaces, private residences and country estates all over the country, turning them into dormitories, sanatoriums, libraries, hospitals, shops and even prison camps.
All this elite real estate was assigned the title "historical and cultural treasures" and the state spent a considerable part of the budget on maintaining these buildings.
In the last days of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation Supreme Soviet adopted the same policy by adopting a resolution on December 25, 1990, which proclaimed all federal architectural treasures the property of the people and prohibited their privatization.
However, in the last 14 years, the entire system of state control over architectural treasures has virtually collapsed.
Today, nobody can answer the question as to how many buildings of federal importance are on the state register. Experts estimate there are about 180,000 registered and another 100,000 are unaccounted for. There are "about 4,000" buildings in Moscow, and "approximately 7,000" in St. Petersburg.
Culture Minister Alexander Sokolov mentions the figure of 90,000 cultural treasures, of which only 13,000 are in good condition.
This vague evaluation conceals a sad picture of devastation, chaos and dilapidation.
When the Russian president decided to build a new presidential residence in Strelnya, on the site of the former Konstantin Palace on the shore of the Baltic Sea (near St. Petersburg), the authorities found the Grand Duke's Palace in such a poor state that it had to be virtually built from scratch. About 6,000 construction workers were involved in the reconstruction process. In three daily shifts over a year, they managed to turn a dilapidated building into a marvel that has surpassed the previous royal residence in its luxury. Mr. Putin finalized the project envisioned by Peter the Great: the construction workers dug an 8km canal leading from the "Pyotr waterway" of the Neva River to the Grand Palace, rebuilt 16 bridges, including 3 drawbridges, restored the desolate park, filled large ponds with water and fish, and recreated nearby trout lakes and some other valuable details. The construction effort drained millions of dollars from the state budget. Obviously, the small museum and library that previously occupied this huge estate could not afford such a grand-scale project.
Strelnya was lucky, but the same cannot be said about other architectural treasures.
St. Petersburg's governor, Valentina Matviyenko, was the first to address the deplorable state of affairs in the sphere of elite real estate. "If the situation is not changed drastically," she stated, "the majority of architectural treasures of the city, palaces in Pavlovsk, Oranienbaum and Tsarskoye Selo, will simply disappear."
"It is necessary to adopt urgently a resolution on civilized privatization of some architectural treasures of cultural and historical importance and, simultaneously, rent other elite real estate on the basis of market prices," she stressed in April 2004. "Otherwise, we will face a disaster."
The governor timed her ultimatum perfectly, because the president and the government had just received a report from a team that investigated the use of architectural treasures in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Experts from the Audit Chamber had discovered a number of problems.
For example, in 1999, the Russian Property Ministry transferred the property rights on the Count Razumov estate, which tops the list of federal architectural treasures, to the Academy of Fine Arts for a meager fee of 261 rubles (10 euros at the time) per square meter!
However, if this has not happened, the estate would have been left without an owner capable of maintaining it.
And another example.
In recent years, the Moscow authorities have spent 4.5 billion rubles (more than $150 million) on restoring hundreds of architectural treasures. It is certainly an astronomical figure! However, according to the data reported by the Museum of Architecture, they simultaneously destroyed 60 architectural buildings of cultural and historical importance. According to the Ministry of Culture, no fewer than 200 historical buildings have been destroyed in Moscow alone. (One recent act of vandalism is the felling of trees in an orchard around Moscow's Petrov Castle and the construction of an underground restaurant there).
Meanwhile, the law does not forbid the renting of palaces and estates owned by the state or municipal bodies for profit. The returns from the rent are quite high. Such practices bring more than 15 billion rubles in revenues each year in Moscow alone.
Opponents claim that the demolished buildings were in such a bad shape that it was impossible to restore them.
Is renting buildings out a solution to the current situation? It would be enough to look at the newly reconstructed Count Durasov estate in Moscow. The palace looks almost perfect, but various tenants have crippled the surrounding park. There is an ugly metal shack, which has housed a miniature motor-racing circuit for about 50 years, in the close vicinity of the palace. There is also a strange carousel. Nothing resembles the former English park, which was literally "torn to pieces."
Such is the picture of a restored place. You can imagine how other, "unattended" places might look.
In the end, the Moscow government, the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography, and the Agency for the Administration and Use of Historical and Cultural Treasures, supported Ms. Matviyenko's ultimatum and the results of the Audit Chamber's investigation. Each had its own proposals and hopes.
Unfortunately, the high expectations were short-lived. The Moscow government has never adopted a specific decision, and the privatization issue has been shelved. The only step taken in that direction was to assign responsibility for preparing a detailed list of all architectural treasures to the Ministry of Culture.
Nevertheless, at least one positive result emerged. The authorities had to concede the obvious fact: they are not capable of maintaining the enormous architectural inheritance of Russia with the state budget. Therefore, the issue of selling palaces, estates, residences and parks to private owners will be solved, sooner or later.
