Forgotten pages in the history of Conservation Area

Forgotten pages in the history of Conservation Area

Even before the Second World War, the monuments of the Conservation Area were in critical condition. The destruction of St. Sophia Cathedral, that in those times had not been major repaired since the 1920s, was a special matter of concern. The cathedral was in disrepair at the time of occupation of Kyiv by the Soviet troops in November 1943 – a consequence of indifference of the Germans to the urgent resolution of this issue during their rule. It is known that the Bolsheviks positioned themselves as saviors of culture from the Nazis, so the Soviet authorities should had taken steps to repair the monuments of St. Sophia ensemble.

For this purpose, on the basis of the monuments of the ensemble the Conservation Area was created, which was a part of the Academy of Architecture of the USSR. Considerable funds were given for the repair and restoration work, which reached over 3 million rubles for the period 1944-1949. But in 1948 there was a conflict between the management of the Conservation Area and the Academy of Architecture, which became a public disclosure on the pages of the all-Union newspaper “Soviet Art”, in which a letter was published by N. Kuchma, Assistant Director of the Conservation Area, and N. Dyachkovsky, foreman of the Conservation Area.

The authors of the letter accused the leadership of the Academy of Architecture of the USSR that it neglected the issue of repair of the cathedral, as well as spent at its own discretion the funds and resources provided for its repair; as a result of these actions, most of the Reserve’s monuments, including the cathedral, were in disrepair. In addition, N. Kuchma and N. Dyachkovsky demanded that the responsible must be punished, hinting at the leadership of the Academy, headed by academician V. Zabolotny, laureate of the Stalin Prize. The conflict resulted in a large-scale inspection by the Ministry of State Control of the USSR of expenditures on the Sophia Reserve, during which significant financial frauds and abuses were carried out, both by units of the Academy of Architecture of the USSR and by employees of the Reserve. In result the Director of the Reserve G. Govdenko and his associates were dismissed by the leadership of the Academy of Architecture of the USSR.

However, the dismissed continued to appeal against such actions to the authorities, to no avail. Instead, the Academy’s management was not punished, although all the fraud and repair abuse could not have taken place without its knowledge as the institution’s supreme manager. The analysis of the documents will help to find out the fairness of actions concerning the management of the Conservation Area, as well as to identify the main reasons that the monuments of the Conservation Area were in a state of disrepair and, consequently, the real interest of the Soviet authorities in saving the cultural treasure of world importance.

The author: Olexander Kostyuchok