After the dismantling of the “Kyiv fortress” the Pyrohove State Museum of People’s Architecture and Folkways of Ukraine is in danger of being next in line for destruction. The Kyiv City Council has allotted part of the protected zone around the museum for the construction of a hotel entertainment and equestrian complex to the Ukrinvestbud Company. Research associates of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences are waiting for the start of the Kyiv City Council’s new session, when the fate of the museum may be decided.
The fight for the museum’s land has lasted for many years - almost since Ukraine became independent. The Kyiv City Council, headed by Oleksandr Omelchenko, tried for three years to lease the terrain to this company, but scholars asserted their right to the museum by appealing to Ukraine’s top leadership.
In 2005 the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine granted the museum the status of National Museum-Preserve of Ukrainian Folk Culture. According to current legislature, all construction on the museum’s protected territory is banned, especially high-rise buildings. The members of the latest convocation of the city council have found a way out of the situation: the land on which the museum itself stands has not been slated for construction but nearly 10 hectares near it, right at the entrance.
Museum personnel as well as the academic community headed by Borys Paton have appealed personally to the mayor of Kyiv, the Verkhovna Rada, and President Yushchenko. “We were notified recently that the decision on the leasing of this land would be considered at the next session of the Kyiv City Council, i.e., on Feb. 8,” explained the director of the Institute of Art History, Hanna Skrypnyk. “But we are not sure about what decision the council members will take, inasmuch as some of them have a personal interest in this matter.”
Why can’t something be built near the museum, where visitors can sit down and eat something? Those who have ever visited Pyrohove can imagine how this will change the perception of the museum’s exhibits and spirit of the 19th century. “Of course, we are going to create an additional entertainment infrastructure, but it should be in the style of the existing museum. Buildings with more than two stories cannot be erected here. However, permission has already been given to construct buildings with more than three stories,” Skrypnyk explains.
There are also plans to create an open-air archeological museum. “Archeological monuments are beyond our current territory,” says Raisa Svyryda, a museum associate. “But to our officials it is just a free site on the map.”
The academicians and museum personnel are not going to sit by and do nothing. They are already developing preventive measures just in case the leasing of their land is confirmed. One idea is for academics and members of the public to picket the city administration. “If necessary, we will create a live chain around this territory to prevent the delivery of building equipment,” Skrypnyk says. But she hopes that matters do not come to this.
The land around the museum is an ethnocultural and landscape center, the only one of its kind in Ukraine. The museum was built in Soviet times, when there was no talk of any land or financial restrictions. Today, however, Pyrohove is surrounded by important highways roads, filling stations, and concrete-and-glass multi-storied constructions beckon from a not so distant future.
It is a crying shame that the museum does not have patrons who would protect it from vandals. As a writer once said, there should be a document that would prevent Ukrinvestbud or anyone else not only from building but even approaching the museum-preserve with construction materials.
