The first Museum Congress as a factor in the evolution of the Museum Science of Russia

The first Museum Congress as a factor in the evolution of the Museum Science of Russia. The First Congress of the Museum was organized on the 1-5 of December of 1930 in Moscow. It's necessary to say that at the turn of 1920-1930's there was very complicated socio-political situation of forced movement to socialism in Russia. The desire of Soviet Government to get ideological and social support has been expressed in calling various conferences and so on. One of it was the First All-Russian Museum Congress. The Museum Congress was organized by the Educational Ministry of Soviet Russia (Narkomat) and its department - sector of science. The Congress was attended by 325 delegates; mostly of them were heads of various State agencies, as well as Directors of large museums. According some indirect evidence it is known about 62 scientific workers from regional and district museums. The authors of the reports had spoken of the need to modify the work of museums, to steer it in the direction of Socialist construction. They ordered museums to transform them into political-educational institutions, make museum expositions based on the Marxist theory of socio-economic formation. They proclaimed the showing of class struggle, the explaining the Communist Party policy, the antireligious propaganda as the main tasks of museums. The delegates of Museum Congress discussed important museum themes: methodology of museum science, co-operation with archives, drawing professionals to museums, new forms of work with visitors, improvement of the situation of small local museums. However, all the questions about the necessary changes were clothed in comunist ideology and demanded from museums to involve in the class struggle and in the socialism construction. There were some criticisms of leading speakers, but they were not taken into account. The Museum Congress Decisions were obligatory for execution. As a result an issue of a new magazine "Soviet Museum" had been started in 1931. The Editorial Board led by I.K. Luppol promoted the idea of restructuring of museums on the basis of dialectical materialism. Then according the Congress decisions training of museum specialists was initiated, methodic boards for local government museums were formed. A fundamental changing of Museum structure was undertook, departments of Socialism became obligatory in museums, museum expositions based on the theory of socio-economic formation. The main task of the Museum Congress was fulfiled, a new concept of Museum development was formulated. Evidently Russian museums got the role of auxciliary organizations serving the cultural needs of the State, deprived of any independent significance.

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