The Interaction of the State Museum Fund and Museums of the Tatar ASSR in the 1920s

Abstract

The article is devoted to one of the Soviet State’s policy directions at the first stage of its existence, aimed at the preservation of cultural va­lues and the formation of museum art collections. The poorly studied question about the features of this policy implementation is revealed on the example of the TASSR (Kazan Province — before May 1920), where in the 1920s a whole network of museums was created; almost in each of them, an art department was organized. The appeal to this topic is relevant in connection with the opening of a large number of public and private museums, which face similar challenges, as well as the active scientific activities of museums to study their own collections, in the framework of creation of the State Catalogue of the Museum Fund of the Russian Federation. For the first time, the article introduces into scientific circulation a number of sources, on the basis of which the main directions of this activity, as well as the museums’ art collections themselves, are analyzed. In the TASSR, the interaction with the State Museum Fund (SMF) was carried out by the Department for Museums and Protection of Monuments of Art, Anti­quities and Nature, employees of which (P.M. Dulsky and P.E. Kornilov) were engaged not only in organization of the artworks’ transferring to museums, but also in their selection. The article states that, thanks to the SMF, the Central Museum of the TASSR had the most complete and valuable art collection, and an interesting collection was formed in the Kozmodemyansky District Museum, which was part of the Kazan Province until 1920. This study shows that the SMF was an important and effective mechanism for the implementation of state policy in the field of culture: its activities contributed to the creation of provincial museums’ collections, based on scientific principles and aimed at presenting the history of fine arts development.