Early Soviet Monument Protection (1917–1939)

• In Event: Monuments of and to the Past: The Politics of Heritage in Interwar Balkans, Russia, and Turkey

Abstract

After the Russian Revolution of 1917 the new Soviet leadership was divided over the question how the new Soviet present and future should look like and how to deal with the disruptive and difficult remnants of the imperial and orthodox past. The Bolshevik policies regarding the protection of architectural monuments ranged between nationalization, destruction, cultural education and musealization. On the one hand, missing legal standards and expertise, unclear and oftentimes changing monument classifications led to ambiguous politics in the field of monument protection. On the other hand, various preservationists fluidly adjusted to the new official narrative to include the difficult heritage into Soviet ideology and therefore to study and ultimately to save architectural monuments during revolutionary chaos, civil war and Stalinist terror. The paper discusses the early Soviet monument protection by highlighting the unique example of the famous Solovetsky monastery on an archipelago in the Russian North. Right from the beginning different state departments and preservationists took an interest in the islands and its unique monument landscape. Although the archipelago was transformed into a large-scale forced labour camp in 1923, known as the first Soviet Gulag, and eventually handed over to the Soviet Secret Police, famous preservationists continued to study and to protect the cultural and architectural monuments from outside and within the prison.

Author

• Katharina Schwinde, Ettersberg Foundation (Germany)