Moscow Museums on the Eve and in the Initial Period of the Great Patriotic War: Organization, Structure, Evacuation

Abstract

In the article, the author examines the condition of the museum industry in Moscow on the eve of the Great Patriotic War and in the first months thereof, when urgent measures were required to move a large number of museum collections far inland. In the research literature, the topic has been considered mainly on the example of individual Moscow museums. The source base of the work comprises archival documents of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR, the Committee for Arts of the USSR, and the Moscow City Council. The author shows that since the beginning of the war, the main efforts of the significantly reduced staff of Moscow museums were aimed at saving museum collections. The exposition activity was practically curtailed. The experience of mass conservation and relocation of museum collections seems relevant from a scholarly and practical point of view, especially since today the management of museums is as decentralised as during the war. This circumstance made it much more difficult to organize the evacuation of museum valuables. An urgent categorisation of museum objects had to be carried out, selecting a relatively small number of the most important historical exhibits, jewels and masterpieces of art that had to be evacuated without delay. The rest of the museum collections were sheltered on the premises of the museums themselves, or were amassed in a special joint storage facility. The transportation of museum valuables in November 1941 was effectively disrupted by the inability to organise rail transport. The immediate danger to museum collections was only removed after the successful counter-offensive of the Red Army in December 1941.