Construction work on the streets next to the St. Sophia of Kyiv National Preserve could jeopardize the safety of this museum’s structures, unique mosaics, and frescoes, said Larysa Skoryk, deputy chair of the Society to Protect Monuments of History and Culture. Even today the walls and vault of St. Sophia’s Cathedral have developed numerous deep cracks several centimeters to several meters long and up to 200 millimeters wide, Interfax-Ukraine quotes her as saying. The eleventh century mosaics and frescoes have also peeled off to a considerable extent. Cracks have appeared even on the walls and vault of the recently-restored 75 meter belfry, while many other structures are sagging. According to the society, most of these signs emerged after 2000, when three-story buildings on Volodymyrska Street added another two or three stories and a mansard roof, while the courtyard of buildings Nos. 20 and 22 became the place of a more than eight meter deep underground garage. Civil engineers are finishing the design of a new seven-story building to be built in place of a two-story one on Sofiyska Street. Other plans specify adding several more floors with mansards to two old three-story buildings on Streletska Street. A fitness center with an overall 200 cubic meter swimming pool is being intensively built on the patio of the buildings on Rylsky Avenue fifteen meters off the walls of an old parish school, an eighteenth century architectural monument. According to Ms. Skoryk, these new structures not only disfigure the old buildings’ architectural ensemble but also exert excessive pressure on the ground, thus causing cracks. The concrete underground car park has affected the flow of subterranean waters, which have now risen and are washing out the foundations of a large number of preserve structures. In her opinion, there is also the danger of ground water flooding over the subterranean caves and catacombs most of which are still unexplored. What also inspires serious fears is the close proximity of large amounts of water (in the fitness center pools), for the loamy soil under St. Sophia’s Cathedral could begin to sink under the slightest leak. Ms. Skoryk puts the main blame for this on Ruslan Kukharenko, chief of the architectural monuments protection department of the Kyiv City Administration.
Secretary of the All-Ukrainian Monuments Protection Society Olena Titova thinks that the current situation is a gross violation of international historical heritage protection regulations as well as of Ukrainian law. Since 1990 the St. Sophia Cathedral, along with the Kyiv Pecherska Lavra Monastery of the Caves and the old town of Lviv, has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The monument is unique in that it has preserved its original architecture almost without change. Under UNESCO rules, even hundred year-old landscapes are not subject to reconstruction. In the times of Kyivan Rus’ and the later Middle Ages, architects followed rather than attacked landscapes. Now, by all accounts, few if any care that our capital has an inimitable pattern and that there are very few cities with such scenery in the world, Ms. Titova says. In general every monument has a protection area of its own within which any construction activities should be subject to regulations. One must take into account at least the final visual result of architectural “improvements.”
In the St. Sophia area, the prime requisite in housing construction is that buildings should have no more than five floors. And while the city’s professional public has grudgingly accepted the new mansards on Volodymyrska Street old buildings (they fit into the landscape quite well), it is up in arms over the permission of local authorities to build a notorious hotel complex opposite St. Sophia’s Cathedral. They also consider it a profanation to assign the name Saint Sophia to the new complex.
In a civilized society, those wishing to restructure the historical part of a city must seek the opinion of architectural organizations on the effect the construction may have on the condition of monuments. Moreover, under law the long list of members of the advisory board that does or does not give the go-ahead for the construction must include architects, although it is not clear which ones. For example, The All-Ukrainian Society only confined its “participation” to protesting the construction. In addition, according to Ms. Titova, the Union of Architects has also recently sent an indignant letter to various offices on this matter. Ms. Titova says that the professionals are being ignored with enviable consistency. The authorities have vividly displayed their attitude toward them as long ago as during the “epoch-making” reconstruction of Sophia Square. At that time, archeologists had to literally snatch unique objects from under the bulldozer’s blade and work by night because the rapidity of construction and the lack of funds for excavations forced them to act quickly. Addressing a press conference on the problem of St. Sophia, Ms. Skoryk noted that the current construction “is being done behind closed doors, as was the case during the reconstruction of Independence Square.” In her opinion, the cited facts constitute a glaring violation of the law, which “entails criminal liability.” But this is a very unlikely outcome in a state where the law does not rule and the law enforcement bodies do their job, she concluded. The chief problem is that constructions similar to the one in question are extremely difficult to stop through a court order. Firsty, non-governmental organizations have no money to pay for any judicial inquiry. Secondly, to identify the damage inflicted on a monument, one must know its exact value. Professionals do not know how to measure some priceless (perhaps only for architects and archeologists) treasures in terms of money. Although there is a law that provides for the punishment of offenders, it usually remains a dead letter, Ms. Titova says.
Nonetheless, Ms. Skoryk said she was going to apply to all the nation’s law enforcement and judicial bodies or, in case of failure, to international organizations. “When Chancellor Schroeder visited Kyiv, I told him to come to Independence Square if he wanted to see our movement toward Europe. He could see there our European image, the face of our authorities, and all our values. Even before the construction started on that square, I told Kukharenko I would declare war on him,” she said.
