Spasskoye-Lutovinovo: museum turmoil led to the death of Nikolay Levin

Lyudmila Butuzova

A year and a half before his death, the work of his life was called into question, he and his daughters - the same museum ascetics - were expelled from all posts, the gates of the Turgenev estate were literally closed in front of them.

It so happened that two days before Levin's death, Novye Izvestia published an article "Spasskoye-Lutovinovo: museum turmoil in the shadow of the Turgenev's oak" . Let us recall that the talk was about the fact that the new museum policy not only ostracizes the former function of museums as guardians of national treasure and requires them to turn into entertainment centers, but also forces museum professionals to the sidelines, replacing them with “effective managers”.

Formally, the “changing of the guard” in Spasskoye was explained by these trends. In fact, Levin was squeezed out in order to crush the estate and put his man on the "kingdom" there. We named everyone who, in the opinion of the cultural community of Orel, was involved in this unseemly case - from the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov, who had been picking up the Turgenev Museum for many years, to the first secretary of the Oryol Regional Committee, Senator Vasily Ikonnikov and his brother Sergei Stupin, who served him. in Spassky as a director, and to the communist governor Andrei Klychkov, cowardly, out of loyalty to an older party comrade, supported the personnel reshuffle, fully aware of what they threaten the federal museum with. Life put an even more terrible point in this story - unable to withstand the heaped stress, Nikolai Ilyich Levin died.

This happened on Monday 28 June. Two days before (after the article was published) the official Eagle seethed and was angry. From the depths of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, incantations were heard that articles in the media (on the same days there was also a publication in the "Sobesednik" about how Zyuganov, using his political influence, covers his relatives and associates from criminal prosecution) - as if this was a planned provocation against the party , a vile attack on the leader. Everything is as usual. The news of Levin's death made him bite his tongues. Governor Klychkov announced this at the planning meeting and ordered his subordinates to help the Levin family with the funeral. The family, as expected, refused services.

In the regional administration, as witnesses of the commotion tell Novye Izvestia, they began to invent an obituary. It suddenly turned out that there was no information at hand about Levin's life, and on the official website of Spassky there was no mention about the former director and president of the museum. Stupin seems to have erased all the traces of his predecessor. As a result, the official obituary was composed and there were even collected the signatures of condolents to the loss. Among the signers are Klychkov, Zyuganov, Ikonnikov, Stupin... True, the sonorous surnames are delicately hidden among the neutral grieving or completely unfamiliar people from Oryol.

“I can’t grasp the criteria by which the order of signatures of mourners was built. And not by rank, sort of like, and certainly not by the number of shed tears. But what is not alphabetically, that's for sure...", - commented on the official mortirologist, the famous Oryol designer and public figure Victor Pankov, - You'd better keep silent, gentlemen".

They said nothing. None of the persecuting gentlemen came to say goodbye to the citizen of the Oryol region, the founder and curator of the Turgenev estate museum.

“A lot of people gathered at the funeral service in the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity and at the cemetery, including from the entire museum community of Russia”, - said Vasily Mikhailovich Paskar, a protector who fought for the museum side by side with Levin for many years, - We all had warm, human words for a friend and a real worker of the museum front. Some secondary clerks from the regional and district administrations pulled up. But just to cowardly leave their flowers and wreaths, to check in... Nobody approached the family with words of consolation".

By the way, the only organization that took a sincere participation and provided assistance to the family in organizing and conducting the funeral was the regional department of the FSB. Nikolai Levin in his youth rose to the rank of major of the KGB - well, at least where it is necessary to remember about this and do not leave.

In general, the farewell, due to the fact that a large number of museum workers gathered at the cemetery, threatened to turn into a meeting all the time. The article in NI so infuriated the professional community that the museum passions did not subside at the grave. And only funeral decency restrained people. Emotions splashed out on Facebook, on the independent site “Laboratory of Museum Design”.

What are they talking about? But read it!

Vladimir Dukelsky: “This is how you should write about museums and their problems, and not lisp, retelling the content of exhibitions and expositions. The essence of what is happening not only in Spasskoye, but throughout the country is captured. It is especially disgusting that all this disgrace is happening under the banner of innovation. The bad news is that when administering innovations we get a double profanation: both museum activities and innovations. The museum simply collapses, and new trends are compromised".

Anton Lagutin: "The good old Soviet tradition is to send retired second secretaries to retirement to the museum".

Nadezhda Yurasovskaya: “There is no point in coming to the museum in order to plunge into the same vulgar noisy entertainment, as a rule, designed for people with very moderate intelligence, which is already overcrowded in cities, there is no point. It turns out that the administration just wants to change the quality of tourists , gradually replacing lovers of fine literature with rabid admirers of various leisure activities, "- how similar it is to what is happening in many current museums, including those in the capital..."

Lera Kagramanova: And where is the Union of Museums with its authority and the possibility of influence? Where is this public body?

They talk about the same thing that worried Nikolai Levin all his life. Maybe his departure will become the beginning of some reasonable shifts in the "reserved swamps"? True, Nikolai Ilyich left behind a strong economy - “Stupin will have enough for a long time,” said his patrons. But we need everything to remain, and not for the occasional Stupin, but for the whole of Russia. This will be the blessed memory of Levin, a citizen and ascetic.