Moscow Architectural Preservation Society calls on Medvedev to halt legal changes

Original and replica

Published on 1 February 2011

Author(s): Salon 246: 13 December 2010

Type:  News

Russian new law threatens the historic heritage

Even more challenging than the task of persuading the Church Commissioners to reconsider their position is the campaign, also supported by prominent Fellows (including Adam Wilkinson, Director of Edinburgh World Heritage), to persuade Russia’s President, Dmitry Medvedev, to think again over proposed amendments to Federal Law No. 163864-5.

Those amendments, says the Moscow Architectural Preservation Society, which is leading the campaign, will legitimise the practice of the ‘reconstruction’ of historic monuments, involving the demolition of the original and its replacement by a modern ‘replica’.

In a letter to the President, the signatories say that rebuilding and redevelopment in the name of reconstruction has already led to the loss of more than 2,000 historic buildings in Moscow, including 200 listed architectural monuments, and that many hundreds more have been lost in Russian cities beyond the capital.

The letter expresses particular concern for St Petersburg’s historic cityscape, so well preserved throughout the Soviet period, and reminds the President that Russia was once renowned for its restoration schools, ‘famous for meticulous work on the palaces around Leningrad after the Second World War, which created a new generation of skilled craftsmen and restorers’.

The letter reminds the President that Russia has ratified the 1972 UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage which, based on the Venice Charter of 1964, does not allow reconstruction, and it requests the President to veto the proposed amendments laid out in white paper No.163864-5.
 

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