P.D.Baranovsky. Unknown Pages in the Protection of Architectural Monuments of the Russian North (1920-1970)

Abstract

This article explores views of Petr Baranovsky (1892-1984), well-known preservationist and architectural conservator, about issues concerning the protection of architectural monuments of the Russian North. In the 1920s P.D. Baranovsky organized the first Russian skansen - an open-air museum of wooden architecture in Kolomenskoye outside Moscow and became its director. He managed to bring to Kolomenskoye several examples of wooden architecture that otherwise might have been destroyed. In the process of transportation the monuments hardly survived. One of them - the "Mokhovaya Tower of the Sumsky Ostrog" - was assembled and installed in Kolomenskoye only in the 1990s. The author argues that P.D. Baranovsky changed his views over time. In the 1970s he, along with his colleagues and members of the Architectural section of the VOOPIK (All-Russan Society for Protection of Monuments of History and Culture) began developing a new "territorial" approach to protection of cultural heritage. Instead of bringing buildings together in a museum, they advocated protection of cultural heritage sites and structures in their original historical and natural settings. This is similar to the modern "cultural landscape" approach, although that name was not in use at Baranovsky's time. The article is based on unpublished archival documents.