RUSSIAN CULTURE NAVIGATOR

english
win1251
KOI8
by Nikolai Tyurin
His name is well known both in and outside this country. Suffice it to mention the majestic memorial complex he built on Prokhorovo field, the site of one of the biggest tank battles fought during the Second World War, his statues of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, Emperor Nicholas the Second, the much venerated Russian Saints Sergy of Radonezh and Serafim of Sarov, the monument to Grand Duke Vladimir in Belgorod to name just a fraction of what has been done by this much endowed, God-loving patriot.
"I was born in the village of Marmyzhi in the Kursk region," Vyacheslav recounts. "Now that I'm well past 50, I just can't be grateful enough to Fate for giving me the chance to be born in this breathtakingly beautiful part of Russia, the place where where I learned to observe the people and the nature...
When I was a kid, my grandmother would take me to a local church where I saw, painted on the walls, the images of the Saints Sergy of Radonezh, Serafim Sarovsky and Iosif of Belgorod. The granny told me about these Saints, when they lived and what they did... As I was growing older, they entered my heart and soul and I realized that the only way we can see our future is to open up our hearts to them and they will show us, Russians, where to go...
When he was a young man studying first at a builders' school and then moving on to a teachers' training college, Vyacheslav didn't ven think about an artistic career. Still his innate penchant for the arts eventually brought him to Moscow's Art Institute named after the great Russian painter Vasily Surikov.
"Early in my life I realized that you can't separate the soul from the matter", he says, "because they are one... I don't think that in art you can separate the form from the subject matter because this is what the artistic image is really all about! I still think that in my art the spiritual prevails over the material..."
Klykov's works are well known and these are all monumental artworks that are always so spiritually and physically draining for the author. Some of them, however, are still high on his mind...
"It's hard to say which of them I like most, you know," Vyacheslav says. "It might be the Victory Monument on the Prokhorovo field. They gave me a very tight schedule, only 18 months before the whole thing was to open in 1995, exactly 50 years after our great victory over the German invaders. The monument was unveiled by Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Aleksy the Second and I'm really happy that this monument stands there on the Prokhorovo field which has gone down in the Russian history as have the fields at Borodono and Kulikovo..."
Vyacheslav has just completed a monument to Saint Prince Vladimir they are going to put up in Belgorod and also a monument to the legendary Russian warrior Ilya Muromets that will soon be erected in Murom.
"I believe this is going to be a memorable event for the people in Murom and elswhere in Russia," Vyacheslav says. "We'll soon be celebrating the 2000th birthday of Jesus Christ and my works, including these latest ones I just mentioned, are my humble contribution to this momentous date. The giant Cross they are going to put up in the Bay of Sevastople in Crimea will also be my gift to the city that has shone so brightly in our history. I recently asked our Ministry of Culture. on behalf of the Slavonic Millenium Anniversary Fund I chair, to bring back the Moscow Kremlin's historical image of a nationwode Russian Orthodox Center. We have five or six major anniversary projects we are going to submit to the organising committee..." .
 
 


THE MYSTERY OF THE BYZANTINE LIBRARY

 
By Alexandra Vinogradskaya
The mystery of the Byzantine library has always stirred the imagination of archeologists, researchers and lovers of adventure. Scholars have argued about its priceless rarities and historians insist that it is irretrievably lost. The search for the "Liberia", as the Byzantine kings' legendary book collection was called, has entered its fifth century.
From time to time scholars call into question the very existence of the Byzantine library in Russia. Some insist it did exist, and that after the death of Ivan the Terrible, the "Liberia"'s last owner, it was put safely away in hiding-places.
Let's recall what happened in Russia in the 15th century. The Greek princess Sofia Paleolog, a niece of the last Byzantine king, married the Grand Prince of Moscow, Ivan the Third, and as her dowry brought along unheard-of riches, the unique Byzantine library. Scholars believe, the Greek rulers wanted to save it from any Vatican claims to it. The chronicles mention one hundred carts loaded with 300 boxes with rare books arriving in Moscow.
Sofia's prime concern, and this is a trustworthy fact, was to build a special underground safe to keep the treasures protected from the fires that often engulfed the wooden buildings of Moscow. It's also known for certain that the celebrated West European architect Aristotle Fiorovanti built a secret sarcophagus for books in the Kremlin's underground.
Decades later, strolling through this underground maze, the son of Ivan the Third and Sofia came upon a hiding-place with ancient books and manuscripts written in languages unknown to him. Later a Greek scholar, Maxim the Greek, made a list of the books and shortly before his death he revealed the secret of the "Liberia" to Sofia's youngest grandson, Ivan the Terrible.
Some 800 manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arab were mentioned in the list. The library contained works by Virgil, poems by Kalvos, "The Lives of Twelve Ceasars" by Suetonius, works by Aristophanes, Polybius, Pindar, Tacitus, Livius, and Cicero. It took the Byzantine emperors hundreds of years to make up the collection. The Germans, English and Italians made many attempts to pursuade the Russian czar to sell the treasure. But a man of considerable literary talent himself, Ivan the Terrible was an eager collector of rare books and fully aware of the high value of his collection. He refused to sell anything.
After Ivan the Terrible's death in the late 16th century the "Liberia" disappeared without a trace. But the Russian czars and the Soviet rulers never gave up the idea of finding it. The Kremlin's underground maze was searched times without number and many hiding-places and ancient passages were found, but never the "Liberia". Every year adds versions about the fate of the library. Here is one given by a young explorer of underground Moscow, Vadim Mikhailov. "A man, whose name is Appolos, is still alive. He knows the secret. He is 90 and totally blind now. The special services gave him such a hard time in years past that he never revealed the secret. When he was examining the Kremlin's underground in the 1930s, he came across the ruins of an ancient passage which brought him to an ancient hiding-place. This, however, almost cost him his life: it was strictly forbidden at the time to look for the library. Since then he has kept the secret to himself. He could never bring himself to share it with anyone. We hope he will finally open it to us researchers. We have already used a plan of his to find several ancient passages under the Kremlin. But in doing so we trespassed on an area of the special services, and access to the passages is so far closed."
Once solved, the "Liberia" mystery may completely change our understanding of world history. Many events of the past are known to us only in tiny fragments and have been brought together as guesses and logical conclusions. Perhaps the "Liberia" will solve many riddles .
 
 
 

THE 1998 WINNERS OF THE PUBLIC RECOGNITION PRIZE

 
 By Larisa Roshchina
On the eve of the New Year 23 winners of the "Public Recognition" national prize were named and golden signs and honorary diplomas were handed in at the Central Museum of Modern History, the former English Club, in Moscow.
Russia's two non-commercial organizations - the Moscow English Club and the Independent Association of the Development of Civil Society became the founders of the "Public Recognition" National Fund and the Fund's prize.
The main criterion for awarding is the socially significant result of professional performance in science, education, culture, the arts, economics, business, law, information, health care, ecology and sport.
Among the prize-winners are people well-known in this country: Artyom Borovik, member of free-lance journalism, Vladislav Tretiak, a prominent sportsman and a healthy life-style activist who has contributed greatly to children's and youth sport, Boris Kuznetsov, a lawyer who has done a lot to protect the human rights of artists and the Russian-speakers abroad, Lyudmila Gurchenko, a movie star who has created a series of women's characters on stage and screne and made a great contribution to national culture, Vladimir Gusev, Director of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, who has preserved and restored many cultural assets.
Among the prize-winners whose names are not so much in the liimelight was Director of the International Trade Center in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, Sergei Yakushin, who has contributed to the creation of a regional market in Siberia and a system of Euroasian exhibitions.
"We, people living in Siberia," says Sergei Yakushin, "believe that next century will see the entire world rushing to Siberia. A mere 25 million live today on a territory of 11 million square kilometers. And according to world standards, this makes Siberia an underdeveloped territory. But in fact this is a perfunctory approach. Siberia has the highest educational qualifications. It accounts for 80 percent of Russia's industrial potential and boasts huge mineral resources. I believe that new spiritual values are being shaped right here, in Siberia. We can see this in philosophy and in the sphere of the development of intellect."
Still another prize-winner, Director of the Endocrinologic Research Center under the Russian Academy of Sciences and member of five international academies of natural and medical sciences, Ivan Dedov received his prize for the development and introduction of a Sugar Diabetes federal program promoting the most sophisticated methods of treatment that allow millions of those suffering from diabetes to live an active life.
"I am engaged in one of the priority areas in health care. 8 million people in Russia and 150 million in the world suffer from sugar diabetes, a disease that creates a serious problem and features as a dramatic page in medicine. The "Public Recognition" prize obliges me to do a lot more. That this action has united the intelligensia is very important for Russia because this will help to restore its culture, spiritual values and good health. As a physician, I am positive that it takes a complex of measures to cure society. Morality and good health are interlinked, they are our highest values."
 
 

BACK TO MAIN PAGE