Interview with the magazine Gorod-812

We agreed with Mikhail Piotrovsky to talk about the times, the country and the world, but he kept bringing us back to museum matters. Here is the result.

Now everyone is saying that we are returning to the USSR. Do you sense that? Does it frighten you?
There is a slogan “Back in the USSR”, taken from the Beatles song, that is popular in the active political world. That world needs a good enemy, one that never attacks, that won’t drop a bomb.
Inside Russia the great “Back to the USSR” tendency has been imposed by the rest of the world, which has instilled in us a feeling that we are incapable of winning in honest completion and need to isolate ourselves.
That feeling is utterly incorrect, although it has found a response inside the country: “We are not recognized, we are not appreciated.”
At the same time there is that song by Simon and Garfunkel – Bridge over Troubled Water. That’s about us, museums and culture are becoming a bridge between countries. Our bridge of culture is working, is acquiring unexpectedly great significance Before there were many bridges. Now there are fewer of them.
We will never go back. That would be a tragic farce.

If we are not going back to the USSR, then where are we going?
Right now we are living in a combination of the 1990s and the Soviet era. It’s not very easy. A time at once of freedoms and restrictions on freedoms. Of a desire to create what I want and the impossibility of doing so.
But the lessons of the 1990s are useful ones.

What do they consist of?
There is the right to independent judgement and the right to independent earning. I am talking about the museum and everything else. And the right to make a significant portion of decisions oneself. For cultural institutions that was difficult, but then we knew that we were ourselves responsible for our decisions.
Autonomy and responsibility – that is the Russian recipe. With this system we were ahead of the “Socialist” European countries – France and Italy.

The American system with the trustees in power won’t spread?
That is a cowboy system. There the risks are too high. A director has to be thinking day and night about how to find money to keep the museum going. That is distracting and makes you dependent on a host of self-seeking trustees.

Now, though, many people think that decisions don't depend on them.
That’s not the case. It’s a different matter that you need to constantly learn how to show those around you, management and everyone else that you’re right. That is the way of doing things that should be preserved. We are not going back to the Cold War. Russia is developing normally.

And what don’t you like in today’s world (not just in Russia)?
One thing. Being here in St Petersburg, I would term it provincialization, or in a general sense simplification and primitivization. We have ceased to admire complex solutions; ceased to feel a positive challenge from complex solutions and complex situations.
We want things to be simple and primitive: black or white, friend or foe, yes or no, two twos are four. This expresses itself not only in a mass of primitive legislative bans, but most significantly internal bans. People are ceasing to understand subtle matters.
Television is shouting and engaging in histrionics, trying to get people in line. It has always done that, but now it is doing it so vigorously that it is causing an inferiority complex, now in one part of the audience, now in another, and, as a result, aggressiveness. Neither the country nor people deserve that. And there are no grounds for it.

There is a theory that Islamic State and Islamic terrorism in general is a response to the fact that the West has ceased to generate values. Do you agree with that?
The Islamic State is an embodiment of the values of the West that has created a world in which there is no decency. Against that background there is primitively understood Islam – a simple religion to which people often turn – don’t drink vodka, don’t gamble, don’t charge interest on loans, share a part of earnings.
The death cult was invented by the western world, and not Muslims, that is why there are so many Europeans there. The whole of Islamic self-consciousness is modern; it is the 21st century and not the Middle Ages.
The destruction of monuments is the destruction of the memory of ancestors, one of the most important foundations of civilization. It is culture, the achievements of ancestors, that gives you the right to exist. That is ceasing to be a value.
Another thing against which they are revolting is the value of the individual human life, which is denied by the whole of the 20th century.
It is a general crisis of human values, of the kind National Socialism was.

Under what conditions, in your opinion, might Islamic terrorism begin to decline?
There have been thousands of sects in Muslim history; a messiah appeared who was supposed to purify the whole world, to carry out the decisive battle. Now the level of informedness has grown and it will be harder to defeat terrorism. It will need the efforts of the military, while the task of cultural figures is to get the complexity of the world across to people, to teach people to refrain from destroying what they don’t like.
You can’t demolish monuments, whether they are to Alexander II, Lenin or some Hellenistic ruler.

Tell us about Putin. What is your understanding of him? What do you think he wants?
Putin irritates everyone terribly: he is the most powerful politician in the world. He undoubtedly accords with deep-seated aspirations of the nation, irrespective of whether those are positive or negative. I am on the jury for the Pushkin Prize for the best book about Russia. Half of them are about Putin. He has become an emblematic figure, a combination of the individual and class essence – all in accordance with Marxist theory.

And just what does the nation aspire to?
The majority wants to feel not insulted and not humiliated. They want mental tranquillity.

The material side of things is of less concern?
That’s a subjective feeling. It depends on one’s personal perception of poverty and wealth, on one’s surroundings and so on.

Have you ever had occasion to appeal directly to Putin to decide some issue, to change the position of the Ministry of Culture, or whatever?
I have had occasion to speak to the president on all sorts of subjects – the 250th anniversary of the Hermitage, the position of regional museums. Our relations with the Ministry of Culture are fine. Our common task is to optimize the bureaucracy that is supposed to aid the development of culture.

You once said that a museum and its director are effective when they extract more money from the Ministry of Culture. Have you managed to extract much?
The effectiveness of a museum lies in what it brings to the city where it is located. The Hermitage brings St Petersburg 5 billion roubles a year. Plus jobs.
The primitive method of “go and persuade them to give you money” doesn’t work.
We have learnt to organize methods. There’s a lot of psychology involved – the friends of the museum society, fundraising, endowments and so on. The echo of our actions spreads around the world and then the bureaucrats react. The year is big. We are constantly negotiating with the Ministry of Finance. It’s important that if they suddenly give you money on 1 December, you have to be quick and spend it, but on the exact thing for which it was allocated.
At the same time, we need to think not only of large visitor numbers (they bring the money) but also that things are comfortable for the museum and that those whom we love come to the museum without bother.
The interests of culture may not coincide with the rights of the person.

It is said that all the original, flamboyant people come from the 1990s. That was the time when you arrived in the Hermitage. But now many of them – you are a rare exception – have ceased to be in demand. Is that a bad thing?
In point of fact, I don’t consider myself a man of the ’90s. You might say I got caught up in the ’90s. Time goes on and people do cease to be in demand. Politicians have a short working life. Scientists have a long one, and so do museum workers. Those who were not in demand in the ’90s are becoming so now.

How do you manage to maintain your reputation of being an upstanding person, yet at the same time loyal to those in authority? Give us some advice on how to preserve one’s decency without leaving Russia.
A decent person should maintain a roughly equal distance from those in power and from the public. I do not proceed from the idea that the authorities are bad and the people good. Close relations with either of them is a threat to one´s reputation. I tried to live as I consider proper.

You have not signed a single collective letter in support of the authorities. But you have been approached – and it’s hard to believe people didn’t take offence when you refused. Has your individual support been demanded?
All my life requests have been made of me. I do not sign collective letters, because I have my own opinion and responsibility. In just the same way I insist on the right of museums to be autonomous and responsible. I also insist on my own human right: if a matter requires my opinion, then I will express it separately.
That position has found understanding up to now. If you are asking about the Crimea and Ukraine, I made my position known at the time, after which some people demanded that Manifesta 10 not be held in St Petersburg until I take back my words.

Every now and again rumours arise that someone has eyes on your position – the person most often named is Vladimir Medinsky. Do those rumours reach you? Is there anything behind them?
Any sensible person would want to take my place. It’s a good one, although with plenty of cares.
We don’t have a monarchy. In the Hermitage there are two or three people that can take over any position, who will ensure a smooth succession. My position included.

But they are saying that Medinsky has already looked for an office for himself in the Hermitage. Is that true?
It’s the same sort of fantasy as the tale of the Hermitage providing a service to be used at [Leningrad Communist party boss] Romanov’s daughter’s wedding banquet.

Your son doesn't want to continue the family traditions and become director of the Hermitage?
He is a publisher and leads his own separate life.

Why did you agree to become head of the Oriental Faculty at St Petersburg State University? Do you see your role as being to develop it or, on the contrary, to protect it from attacks?
To help the faculty to return to the academic basics – the study of texts, languages, Oriental studies as a large field in the humanities, the area of knowledge upon which economics, politics and all the rest is constructed.
Specifically the huge programme is called “The Revival of Islamic Studies”, and more broadly an intensification of the teaching of the history of Islamic culture that will be acceptable to both secular and religious figures, imams and free-thinking students. That is the tradition of Oriental studies in Russia. Courses have already been inaugurated for students off the street and sent by the muftiate.
Together with Moscow Arabists, we are striving to revive values that will be acceptable for complex cultured people, secular and religious.

At the moment with us new enemies are appearing all the time – the Americans, the Ukrainians, now the Turks. That must inevitably affect your activities. As Dean of the Oriental Faculty, has it been suggested to you, for example, that you abandon some Turkish joint projects?
We have not needed to abandon anything, although everything has become more difficult. The Turkish-language competitions for schoolchildren will continue. We have elected Orhan Pamuk an honorary doctor of the university. His visit to the Cultural Forum had been postponed even before all those events. The book did not come out in time. I think we will find a moment for him to come, and then we will recall all the complexities of our relations.
Turkey has many faces. We spent a lot of years on forgetting the difficulties in relations with Turkey in the 20th century.
Europe began to forget that the Turks stood at the gates of Vienna. That was perceived as the end of the world and boosted the Reformation.
Life is complex and that is good, that is interesting. When it’s simple, it’s boring and uninteresting. In particular, we might recall that the great Russian nationalist Konstantin Leontyev liked Turkey and its customs and wrote positively about it.

And what about the Armenian genocide?
I prefer the term “slaughter”. It was a crime committed by the Turkish regime. I do not like the term “genocide”. It has legal overtones, after which demands for monetary compensation follow. I perceive those events as a heroic story of resistance by the Armenian people.

And in the Hermitage, have you given anything up because of the country’s course towards isolation?
In the Hermitage preparations are continuing for a joint exhibition of Russian and Turkish war trophies. The permanent display of the Middle East is being prepared. Ottoman Turkey is in the pipeline.

Why did you give Kekhman curatorship over the Hermitage Theatre? Are you not worried by his ambiguous reputation?
The institution – the Mikhailovsky Theatre – has a reputation, and for the development of the Hermitage collaboration with the Mikhailovsky Theatre, where Kekhman is a successful artistic director, is important.
We are not handing the theatre over to anyone. We are joining the Mikhailovsky to it (partially).

For several years now obscurantism has been growing, encouraged by the authorities and termed a return to traditional values – “Cossacks”, Orthodox activists and so on are trying to oppose everything that comes from the West. Does that worry you? When will it end?
It doesn’t worry me. For quite a long time the authorities supported non-traditional values. As a true Marxist, I believe that the authorities reflect the mood of the majority. While a minority actively seek confrontation, the authorities heed the majority that stand up for traditional values. But the actual processes are more complex. There is both good and bad in this. Today it’s one way, and tomorrow it will be different.
The return to traditional values is a protest against modernization as the elimination of family values in life, in business and everything else. When an enterprise ceases to be a family, that’s when modern economics begins.
Archaic values protect people from modernization that seems harmful and dangerous.
The recipe is always the same – work. Deal with your own affairs and preferably don’t interfere with other people’s.

But in the case of the Chapman brothers’ exhibition isn’t that just what happened – people interfered in your affairs?
Now comes my favourite song: the sacredness of the territory of culture. We are responsible for our own affairs and have a duty to defend them. Neither the public nor the authorities, but we determine what can and cannot be shown in museums.
Sadly, we live in a society of distrust and a lack of the presumption of innocence.

And can anything be changed?
That’s the objective reality. Humanity has been living with the presumption of guilt since time immemorial. It wasn’t [Stalin’s chief prosecutor] Vyshinsky that invented it.
A procedure of trust has still to be worked out.
I view everything that takes place around the Hermitage a priori as a possible incursion against the Hermitage, as a desire to lay hands on our collections. I regard the talk about intolerant St Petersburg as preparation for yet another attack on Petersburg-Leningrad – the destruction of the Siege Museum, the “Leningrad Affair” and so on.

Pozner’s recent remark about the intolerance of St Petersburg – made, incidentally, within the walls of the Hermitage – was that not capable of offending?
Pozner is a journalist; it’s his job to be provocative. But there are a lot of remarks about the city’s intolerance; I hear them from Petersburgers as well. It’s a stupid attitude. There are cities where clashes of ideas take place and those where they don’t. The siege – there you have the main ideological clash of the 20th century. Akhmatova and Zoshchenko on one side and Zhdanov on the other – that was here. And the trial of Brodsky, too. But it all began with the Decembrists. Then there were the regicides and the revolutions. Viewed in those terms, Petersburg is a city of the clash of ideas, a city of mutual intolerance.

The action performer Pavlensky faces criminal charges. Did you not want to speak in his defence? In your opinion is he an artist or a hooligan?
There is artistic provocation and there is political provocation, what Pavlensky does is the latter. At the moment I have no reasons to defend him, but that does not mean that I will never do so. The situation may change.

How can you instil a civilized attitude to contemporary art?
By holding exhibitions in the Winter Palace, where people come to see how the tsars lived. That makes people accept that both Velazquez and Bacon exist.

Is a museum of contemporary art required in St Petersburg, or is it enough to develop the departments in the Hermitage and Russian Museum?
In my opinion there is a need for a museum of that kind, although art is all one and we in the Hermitage present art in its unity. Experience has shown, though, that the MCC is of interest to people. There is the experience of MOMA, where half the art is far from contemporary, but the museum has become a cultural centre.
In Russia so far it hasn’t work out, but it should be tried. It could turn out interesting. There should be a lot of activity, a lot of the public for whom only that is interesting. It is a living audience for whom an exhibition of contemporary photography holds more appeal than Cranach.

We are talking in the run-up to the New Year. Can you name the most important events for the Hermitage in 2016?
The permanent display of numismatics will be opening soon. It has been closed for over 30 years. I will be seeing it for the first time as director.
Now major, complex negotiations are underway about an exhibition of Byzantine art from Greece as part of the programme of a crosswise year of culture. We want to show the best of what there is in our quite considerable collections.
We are planning a show of art from South-East Asia that is hardly displayed at all permanently. At one time a small part of that Hermitage collection amazed President Jacques Chirac of France. And he amazed me with his knowledge of all five or six schools of Siamese sculpture.

When I was coming to the Hermitage, I noticed that besides the city’s main New Year’s tree, there are a large number of different structures on Palace Square. Is that another attack on the Hermitage's space?
No, it’s the installation for projecting the New Year 3D mapping onto the façades of the eastern wing of the General Staff building, that will perhaps soon be renamed the Hermitage Rossi.
The Hermitage Days in December could become a celebration for the whole city. The mapping that attracted hundreds of thousands of people in 2014 for the Hermitage’s 250th anniversary will become a tradition.

The New Year, the parade on 9 May and the Scarlet Sails event – and that’s enough for Palace Square?
Those plus events that need no significant constructions: the start or finish of foot, car and motorbike races. Brief and with no loud music. The main charm of Palace Square comes when it’s empty with little human figures scurrying across it.