"War Museum" continues

[SergeiSK]

Yesterday the director of the Moscow Kremlin Museums Elena Gagarina told the press that appointed for September show "Paul Poiret - King of Fashion" was in jeopardy . The reason for this has complicated the situation in the cultural relations between Russia and the U.S.. It can seriously complicate US-Russian cultural cooperation, but can also serve as a pretext for another diplomatic victory in Russia, already accessible by well-known scenario.

The last story is associated with claims of "library Schneerson. In early August 2010 a federal district court in Washington ruled that the right to a disputed part of the collection of books and documents collected by the founders of the Lubavitcher Hasidic Rabbi Yosef Schneerson (the so-called Schneerson Library), owned by the parent organization Lubavitcher Hasidim Agudas Chassidei Chabad, based in Brooklyn, and that the family archive Shneerson stored in the Russian State Library (RSL) and the Russian State Military Archive illegally. Part of the collection was nationalized by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and ended up in the RSL. Schneerson took out another part of the Soviet Union, immigrated to the 1930's. She fell into the hands of the Nazis, and then appeared before the Soviet army and returned to the USSR.

Russian Foreign Ministry stated that it considered the decision "null and void from the legal point of view," because state ownership of Russia is not in the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, and that the return of books and manuscripts from the library and archives will not. Moreover, the Foreign Ministry demanded the return of seven books, "Library Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Hasidim that American got on international interlibrary loan from the State Library through the Library of Congress for two months in 1994, but did not return to this day. In response, the Agudas Chassidei Chabad stated that it intends to pursue a resolution in all ways, until the requirements of the arrest caught up in America, State Property.

After that exhibits the Museum Fund of the Russian Federation no longer travel to the United States. The exhibition "Gauguin, the creator of the myth," triumphantly held in the Tate Modern, in London, arrived at Washington's National Gallery in the truncated part - without the "hits" from the Hermitage and the Pushkin Museum of Fine lack of which makes any retrospective "Tahitian hermit" inferior. Affected and other high-profile exhibition "Canaletto and his rivals: the London National Gallery in Washington, she moved without perhaps the best exhibit - kanalettovskogo the reception of French ambassadors."

Yesterday the spokesman for the Ministry of Culture Natalia Uvarova in a conversation with a correspondent of Kommersant said that no new positions on this issue from the ministry there, and referred to the speech of the Minister of Culture in the air, "Ekho Moskvy on 19 January this year, where Alexander Avdeev said the following : " Since the court decision was not to our advantage, then all of Russia's intellectual property, not covered with diplomatic immunity, can be arrested on U.S. soil . Legally, any of our exhibition can be arrested. We are now working with U.S. diplomats , and probably will be some decisions to ensure hundred percent guarantee of the integrity of our intellectual property in the United States. "

U.S. State Department was quick to take retaliatory action. No items from the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition "Paul Poiret - King of Fashion", dedicated to the legendary designer of the early twentieth century, is simply meaningless. A source in the Moscow Kremlin Museums, told Kommersant that this exhibition - the only part of an intensive program of cooperation with American museums, with which relations are now "under the monstrous threat." It is difficult to imagine, for example, do without things from America's grand exhibition, which should celebrate the anniversary Pushkin Museum of Fine in 2012. In addition, over the years 2011-2012 had been designated the US-Russia cultural cooperation. Their official program of the same risk of being damaged as a result of this situation.

"We are now working with American colleagues on a draft intergovernmental agreement which we have to sign up to Russia's interests were protected by cultural values," - told Interfax Russian president's special representative for international cultural cooperation Mikhail Shvydkoi. The whole question of timing: in the words of Mr. Shvydkoi, the development agreement will take about a month, but how long will it take until the final ratification of the document is unknown - and all this time because Russia will not be exported to America, no work .

Sergei Khodnev, Maria Semendiayeva
The newspaper Kommersant »№ 38 (4579) on 04.03.2011