The Museum of the Obsolescent Cult (1923-1927): history of creation and main ways of collection formation

The article is devoted to the history of the foundation and the main ways of the formation of the collection of the Museum of the Obsolescent Cult, which existed in Petrograd (Leningrad) in 1923-1927. The museum was founded on the initiative of members of the Church Commission, which was a structure in the Society of Old Petersburg. Many of its members were young people, students of Petrograd University, the Institute of History of Arts and the Institute of Civil Engineers. They studied church monuments of Petrograd, drew up questionnaires for each building and found out important historical and cultural objects. Mass closure of family and institutional chapels at the beginning of the 1920s caused the foundation of the Museum of the Obsolescent Cult. The museum staff (V.A. Tauber, K.A. Zelenin, M.P. Belov) tried to preserve the entire ensembles of churches with decoration as an illustration of the development of church culture of the 18th - early 20th centuries. The author uses archival documents on the activities of the museum, preserved in the archival fund of the Society of Old Petersburg - New Leningrad (Central State Archive of Literature and Arts of St. Petersburg). The history of the museum is traced by detectable sources. The author of the article analyzes the project of the museum, made by V.A. Tauber, and reveals the relationship of this museum with museums of everyday history operating at this time in Petrograd (Leningrad). The display of the complex relationship between the Museum of the Obsolescent Cult and the state institutions of monument and museum protection of Leningrad (Leningrad Branch of Glavnauka, the Museum Fund, the Committee for the Protection, Maintenance and Restoration of Historical Monuments) is an important part of the article. The author reveals three main ways of forming the collection of the museum: 1) assignation of the property of closed churches, 2) private donations, 3) acquisition of separate elements of decoration of civil buildings. The list of the churches assigned to the Museum of the Obsolescent Cult is compiled and presented in the article. The main part of assignation was carried out in 1924-1926. The period from 1923 to 1926 was the time when the museum collection was formed. At the beginning of 1927, the museum staff started forming an exposition but in the autumn of the same year the museum was closed. Although church monuments were quite a dissonant heritage for the cultural discourse of the early Soviet era, the closure of the museum was mostly due to economic and administrative, not ideological, reasons. The Society of Old Petersburg did not have financial means to maintain the museum, and two buildings on Vasilievsky Island, where it was located, were converted into apartments for the workers of Vasilievsky Island. The museum collection was transferred to the State Museum Fund, which divided its items between several museums (the State Russian Museum, the Museum of the History of the City) and Leningrad research institutions (the Academy of Sciences, the State Public Library).

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