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Evgenii Vasil'evich Mikhailovskii's The Methods of Restoration of Architectural Monuments Author(s): Igor Demchenko Source: Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism, Vol.

8, No. 1 (Summer 2011), p. 83Published by: University of Minnesota PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/futuante.8.1.0083Accessed: 10-11-2015 07:14 UTC

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1. Portrait of Evgenii Vasil’evich Mikhailovskii. Photo courtesy the Schusev State Museum of Architecture.

This content downloaded from 37.232.76.91 on Tue, 10 Nov 2015 07:14:11 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

83

Future AnteriorVolume VIII, Number 1Summer 2011

The edited volume The Methods of Restoration of Architectural Monuments was prepared by Evgenii Mikhailovskii as an of-ficial reference tool for Soviet restorers. It aimed at reflecting the state- endorsed position regarding the goals of heritage preservation activities in the Soviet Union.1 From the mid- 1960s, Mikhailovskii, who was both a practicing restorer of Old- Russian church architecture and a scholar working for the Central Scientific Research Institute of the History and Theory of Architecture in Moscow (the TsNIITIA, currently the NIITIAG RAASN), established himself as a firm pro-ponent of the Venice Charter, opposed by the patriotic wing of the Soviet preservationist community. Mikhailovskii was con-cerned with the growing rift between the historicist approach advocated by the UNESCO heritage preservation institutions and the unruly aestheticism and cultural nationalism, which in the 1940s justified the reconstruction and recreation of monu-ments destroyed by the Germans in the western regions of the USSR and by the 1960s had spread to all the republics of the Soviet Union. In the introductory chapter to The Methods volume, which is translated below, Mikhailovskii attempts to differentiate be-tween the artistic value that the restorers of the patriotic wing strived to recreate in monuments and the aesthetic value con-tingent in each historic period. Mikhailovskii inevitably aligns himself with the official position of the Soviet Marxist- Leninist aesthetics that postulates the objectivity of artistic value; however, in consent with Alois Riegl he argues that the creative modes of the past epochs, despite their objectivity, are inac-cessible to contemporary restorers. Mikhailovskii insists that, instead of trying to penetrate the creative consciousness of the past epochs, Soviet restorers should clean, consolidate, and reveal historic monuments in order to provoke aesthetic feel-ings in contemporary viewers who do not have special training in the history of art. According to Mikhailovskii, this is the only type of intervention that could be done to a monument without relying on subjective—and thus inappropriate—stylistic con-jectures. Mikhailovskii’s theories were the primary guiding principles for the preservation work carried out by TsNIITIA until the 1980s, when he left the research institute and a new generation of late- Soviet theoreticians returned to the practice of complete restoration.

Evgenii Vasil’evich Mikhailovskii’s The Methods of Restoration of Architectural Monuments

Igor Demchenko

This content downloaded from 37.232.76.91 on Tue, 10 Nov 2015 07:14:11 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions