“Trophies - loss - equivalents. Cultural values - victims of war: the results of research and prospects”. Russian-Germanic symposium at the German Historical Institute in Moscow.

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Annotation / Аннотация
Information about Russian-German symposium dedicated to problem of restitution of cultural values which were lost during the Second World War.
Сообщение о российско-германском симпозиуме, посвященном проблеме возвращения культурных ценностей, утраченных в ходе Второй мировой войны.

Keywords / Ключевые слова
Symposium, cultural values, restitution, Second World War, Russia, Germany, museums, archives. Cимпозиум, культурные ценности, реституция, Вторая мировая война, Россия, Германия, музеи, архивы.


On February, 27-28th, 2009 at the German historical institute in Moscow has taken place the Russian-German symposium “Trophies – Losses – Equivalents. Cultural values – a victim of war: results of researches and prospect”, organized by the State art meeting of Dresden and the German historical institute in Moscow. Basic themes of a symposium were: the moving of cultural values caused by the Second World War, losses of Russia and Soviet Union; art as a victim of war in historical prospect; a problem of an estimation of the values lost during war; a problem of preservation of traces and reconstruction of the lost values; problems of operating conditions of cultural establishments after the losses.

The head of Rosarhiv, the corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences V.P. Kozlov has stated his point of view on a problem of the moved archives. In his opinion returning of archives is a moral duty of the people, political responsibility of heads of the states, a professional duty of persons, whose activity it is connected with preservation and use of archives. But already prior to the beginning of this process archives should be popular, irrespective of a place of their present storage. All moved archives should become object of an exchange of the information containing in them assuming equal possibilities for any associate on using by it and its use.

Concrete decisions on returning of the moved archives, according to V.P.Kozlova, should be accepted within the limits of two-way deals and in a context of all complex of historical and modern mutual relations of the sided. In V.P. Kozlova's report are planned three stages of actions and two levels of decision-making on practical realisation of the named principles. The first stage – is definition of a complex of archives and the archival documents which are subject to returning. Simultaneously it is also the first level of the decision of a problem when in business the major role is played by experts-experts. The second stage and the following level of decisions – is expression of political will concerning returning of archives and passage of each country of procedure of its realization corresponding to the legislation. The third stage is connected with practical actions on the organization of returning of archives.

The problem of archival researches with a view of search of the moved cultural values in the report was considered by the known American researcher of archives, the expert in the field of studying of structure and the maintenance of archives of Russia, Ukraine and countries of Eastern Europe Patricia Kennedy Grimsted. Considerable interest was presented by the reports given during a symposium on the concrete problems connected with loss and returning of moved cultural values: search and returning of the Russian cultural values in 1940-1950 (Margarita Zinich, Institute of the Russian history of the Russian Academy of Sciences), restoration of the Amber room (Larissa Badovskaja, the State memorial estate “Imperial village”), irrevocable loss of the Stalingradsky art gallery (Tatyana Gafar, the Volgograd museum of the fine arts), losses of art values in Novgorod Great (Sergey Trojanovsky, the Center on the organization and maintenance of archaeological researches of the Novgorod memorial estate), and book values in Pskov (Svetlana Volkova, the Pskov state incorporated historic-architectural and art memorial estate), losses of the Tretyakov gallery in days of the Great Patriotic War (Lyudmila Markina, the State Tretyakov gallery), roles of SVAG in export of cultural values from Germany and search of own cultural losses (Natalia Volkehrt, University of Johann Gutenbrga, Mainz), etc.

In total 120 participants of a symposium have addressed to the governments of Russia and Germany with the request to promote work of official bodies of culture (museums, archives, libraries etc.) on revealing of the moved cultural values. Participants of a symposium have suggested to found the bilateral commission on working out and coordination of the future projects of joint research work on the themes offered by the parties; to coordinate activity on joint search of traces of the moved cultural values, an establishment of an origin of the moved subjects of art in both countries, to carry out joint searches of the lost cultural values in the third countries.