There will always be a war of memory

Who were the Varangians – Scandinavians or Slavs? That eternal Russian discussion has a Hermitage connection. The Hermitage Director Stepan Gedeonov wrote the book The Varangians and Rus’, according to which the Varangians were Eastern Slavs. His chief opponent was his own deputy, Bernhard von Koehne, who upheld the Normannist theory. They argued, yet Koehne completed the publication of Gedeonov’s work in 1876, following the death of its author.

Then came times that were less “vegetarian”. The debates shifted from the scholarly arena to the political. Many people ruined their careers by insisting upon a theory that was reckoned unpatriotic. “Patriotic” decisions about the origins of Russian statehood were taken by the country’s leadership, both in tsarist times and today. The 1000th and 1150th anniversaries of Rus’ were celebrated “according to Rurik”. The scholarly debates continue.

The Hermitage occupies a special place in those arguments. It is the repository of finds from excavations in Staraya Ladoga, one of Rus’s most ancient towns and a place through which the Varangians came. Proofs of a Scandinavian presence have been found in large numbers in that Early Russian town.

Decrees can be adopted at the level of the state. Museums transfer the debate into the scholarly realm.

In history you do not get just black and white. When there is a fight, they clash with one another. When the fighting stops, the clash is best forgotten.

The established reecollection of the Tatar-Mongol yoke is founded on ideology in the creation and strengthening of Russian statehood. A certain exaggeration of the reality took place that was necessary to unite the people in the struggle against an external enemy. The enemy has become a thing of the past and it is possible to proceed from a scholarly viewpoint.

Museums possess collections relating to the Golden Horde. The Hermitage has a large display. Many years of research have shown that the main routes from the Golden Horde did not lead to Russia at all, but to Cairo, China, Central Asia, Mesopotamia, Baghdad. They collected tribute from the Russian principalities – and then went away. That relationship was brilliantly exploited by the Russian feudal principalities for unification, the contrasting of East and West. Scholars have a conception of the Golden Horde as a high civilization and not savage nomads. In museums objects from the Russian principalities and the Golden Horde lie alongside each other and enter into a dialogue. Look and reflect on that.

It is impossible to speak about things that are close to us in time and still alive in the memory. One example is the Great Patriotic War: there black and white are inevitable. We cannot discuss whether Leningrad should have been surrendered to the Germans. But we can debate about Moscow in 1812 as much as you like.

Now there is discussion of creating a revamped Museum of the Defence and Siege of Leningrad, devoted to a great chapter in this nation’s history, an extremely important element in our city’s sense of itself. A museum is being created, let me remind you, that was repressed and lost its place of residence.

What should that museum accentuate? Leningrad as a model of resistance, like Stalingrad and Sevastopol, or as a terrible example of the mass annihilation of human beings, like the Holocaust or Hiroshima? For our own time, it is important to present the siege as an inhuman method of waging war, an experiment in the use of starvation as a weapon. What took place was one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century.

The Hermitage considered it proper to present the siege as a great feat. If someone managed not to die in such terrible conditions, that was already a feat, but people also worked and defended the city. We know that after the war Leningrad’s heroic accomplishment was suppressed and the liquidation of the Museum of the Siege is proof of that.

On museum premises the most varied wars of memory rage. This year we are marking the centenary of the revolution. In the events of a hundred years ago there is plenty of black and white, beginning with the assessment of Nicholas II. Solzhenitsyn passed a harsh verdict on him as an emperor who failed to cope with his duties. Yet at the same time there are people for whom that emperor is a saint. They will not hear a word said against him.

The Hermitage is telling about everything from the museum’s point of view. On the anniversary of the abdication we did not hold a service in the Winter Palace church but a concert in memory of the Emperor’s abdication. And alongside an exhibition appeared devoted to the Provisional Government. It has also been denigrated all the time, but there were some far from ungifted people in that government. Kerensky was an outstanding personality. He was capable of doing a lot. Alongside him there were exceptional figures, such as Boris Savinkov. The Provisional Government had experienced politicians in it. A lesson from history: the intelligentsia came to power but was incapable of holding on to it.

The way was paved for the revolution by class issues and the structure of the state. The mythology of the French Revolution also played its role. Today, the French consider that to have been horrible, although they sing the Marseillaise.

In 1917 Russia took its cues from the French Revolution. Suffice it to recall the storming of the Winter Palace, which never happened. They went in through the door and arrested people. It needed to be presented as a storm, because during the French Revolution the people stormed the Tuileries Palace. Then the film director Eisenstein created the myth.

The Emperor abdicated. What need was there to arrest him? That was how the French had acted: they arrested their king, tried and executed him. In the Hermitage a commission met that investigated the crimes of the tsarist regime. Blok, Oldenburg and Tarle worked on it. People had the memory of Robespierre firmly in their minds. The French Revolution ended with the guillotine; everyone knows how it ended with us. It is dangerous to resurrect the events of the past.

There are things kept in museums that can be used both for hostility and for reconciliation.

Russia often fought against Turkey. In the Hermitage there is a collection of banners captured from the Turks. The Special Collection includes Turkish gifts. One of the celebrated scoops is a reminder that a Russian army helped the Turks defend Constantinople from the forces of the Egyptian Sultan. The museum preserves elements of battles and conflicts, while providing examples of reconciliation.

To a considerable degree, the present-day map of the southern Caucasus took shape as the result of Russia’s wars against Persia. The Hermitage has a Persian banner that comes from the southern Caucasus. The Persians say that it is theirs. In Nakhichevan they reckon that the banner belongs to them. It is possible to reduce the possibility of conflicts, and it is possible to fan them.

Today there are many acute issues connected with Islam. There are people who picture the history of Islam as a struggle between Muslims and Christians, the Crusades. Migrations is regarded as a reverse crusade by Islam into Europe.

Ascetic, fanatical Islam has always existed. But it is not the full extent of what existed in Islam. People forget about the beautiful life and free-thinking, the theology and philosophy that got along and fought with one another… Today the two images of Islam are seen as being in opposition, but the museum juxtaposes everything as well.

Universal museums preserve the cultural heritage of humanity. Only very recently we considered that it belonged to the whole world. But now in Greece and other countries there are calls to “Give us back what’s ours!”. The dispute over the Parthenon marbles that ended up in the British Museum has become a textbook example. Respect for one’s own culture turns into a conflict over culture.

The argument over what belongs to whom, what is taken from whom, is also a war of memory. The right to the consolidation of memory is being restricted, but that is the essence of humanity’s cultural development.

We should not revive wars of memory, but sometimes they can be used as a reminder. With respect to contemporary art, say. A classic example is the Taurida Venus. Peter the Great brought the statue to Russia and forced Petersburgers to look at a depiction of a naked pagan goddess. People forget that the public was outraged by exhibitions of Picasso. Admittedly, no-one wrote complaints to the prosecutor’s office.

It is impossible to get rid of wars of memory. The embers continue smouldering and should not be fanned. There will always be someone who says that the labels in a museum say the wrong thing or that an artist is hanging in the wrong section.

Museums are peace-makers. Demonstrating the similarities of cultures, carefully documenting them, showing that the world is varied, that not everything in it comes down to black and white, they reconcile people and remove divisions.