"The council was a conflict commission, not a governing body".Activities of the Council of Curators of Suburban Palaces and Museums.

Abstract

The subject of the study is the Council of Curators of Suburban Palace Museums. In mid-1918, under the People's Commissariat of Education, the Council of Suburban Leaders was created in order to consolidate efforts to transform the royal residences into museums. The guardians of Peterhof, Tsarskoe Selo, Gatchina, and Pavlovsk palaces decided at meetings numerous issues regarding the future of the royal palaces. The author examines in detail such aspects as the problems of the daily activities of the suburbs, reforms in the management of palace-museums. Particular attention is paid to the following areas of the Council's activities: the authorities' claims to the property of former residences, personnel issues, problems of financing, security, etc. The methodological basis of the study is the principles of historicism, objectivism and systematic scientific analysis. The main conclusion of the study is the determining role of the Council in relation to state policy to create a unified management body for palaces and museums. The Council was a platform for expressing the public position of representatives of the intelligentsia. The curators openly discussed with cultural officials about the future structure of the palace-museums. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time an attempt has been made to analyze the activities of the Council of Curators of Suburban Palaces and Museums. Despite the lack of authority to make independent decisions, the Council was able to prove to the authorities the need to separate palace-museums into a separate group of art-historical organizations. And also achieve the creation of a separate government body to centralize the management of the suburbs.