Russian Museums Serving Totalitarianism

Oleksii Kopytko, military and political analyst, coordinator of the "Information Resistance" group, and leading expert at the NGO "Center for Military-Political Research," as well as former deputy chairman of the board of the Ukrainian Center for Museum Development, has written a very important piece about how Russia is attempting to influence public opinion in other countries through... museums.

Let’s return to the important matter: how Russia plans to outplay us in the long run.

The tip of the iceberg. A quote from 24 May 2024, from the Russian Ministry of Culture website: "The President of ICOM Russia, Director of the State Museum-Reserve 'Gatchina' Vasily Pankratov stated that under the current circumstances, Russia continues its representation in ICOM and operates as a full-fledged structure within the international organization. He also shared plans for upcoming conferences to discuss cooperation with ICOM national committees and foreign cultural institutions..." This statement was made during a visit to Moscow (!) by several ICOM officials to participate in the "Intermuseum" festival (sponsored for many years by oligarch Vladimir Potanin). ICOM (International Council of Museums) is a global association of museum professionals, related specialists, and academics, as well as profile institutions and organizations. Its headquarters are in Paris. It is a very influential platform for dialogue at any level, especially in "old Europe." 

But not only there. Anywhere where museums are an important part of the political and economic landscape. At an ICOM-sponsored event, you could invite anyone from a rural teacher to a sheikh or a king. And they would come. 

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia's participation in ICOM activities has been limited. But throughout this time, efforts to reinstate Russia have not ceased, driven by the initiative of the... most influential European countries. For example, the Netherlands. With the unofficial support of other EU countries that have supermuseums. 

The position they are trying to play: the world is full of wars, and if you exclude "conflicting parties" from communication (!), the cultural dialogue will suffer. The explanation that there is an aggressor and a victim, who cannot be equated, encounters excuses like "we are above politics / it’s not that straightforward / it’s a life matter." 

The restrictions worked somewhat but recently have begun to erode noticeably. On 10-12 June 2024, at the annual meetings of ICOM's governing bodies, ICOM Ukraine President Anastasia Cherednychenko emphatically highlighted the inadmissibility of Russia's creeping return, especially official trips to Moscow. At the level of professional community reaction, Ukraine is doing what it can and must. But these efforts are not enough. 

Because the opponents have huge interests in the West and the full might of the Russian state machinery. I will remain silent about our "state machinery." In this regard, the "Information Resistance" group will provide comprehensive support to ICOM Ukraine in informing partners about the true nature of the Kremlin’s intentions and actions using museums. 

The initial analysis showed the following:

What makes museum policy good for analysis? The fact that museums are always about the future. By the nature of the efforts invested in museums, you can ALWAYS see the type of consequences in the medium term. 

The type of consequences museums create is status and legitimacy, connections of any breadth and depth (with ordinary people, but especially with elites and opinion leaders). Museums are like radiation. They are extremely difficult to resist because they carry absolute good. It’s a kind of benevolent nuclear bomb. 

Using museums as an instrument, you can overcome resistance from initially disloyal environments and find contacts where they never existed. And the "half-life" of established connections is very long. 

The Russian side understands this perfectly and uses it. And now they are building a real meat grinder designed to suppress resistance to the issue of aggression against Ukraine at a cognitive level, ensure the restoration of contacts, but most importantly - create new stable connections with the countries of the "global South" or the "world majority," as they say in Moscow.

What is happening and what does it look like? 

At the highest political level, Russia has approved several conceptual documents on cultural and historical expansion. In these papers, ostensibly about culture, there is a direct reference to the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation as the source of actions. Nothing is hidden. There is a militarization of culture. Literally - transforming cultural institutions into instruments of war, into weapons. Especially museums. The work vectors with three audiences are clearly outlined - external, domestic Russian, and for the occupied territories of Ukraine. For each audience, its own product and support tools are created. At the level of coordinating general historical policy (including theses about "ancient Russian lands"), this process is overseen by the assistant to the Russian leader, Vladimir Medinsky. His apparatus tools include the so-called Commission on Historical Enlightenment and the Russian Military-Historical Society (created specifically for him by Putin's decree in 2012).

The lion's share of practical work is personally supervised by the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergei Naryshkin. Besides the SVR, he has public instruments at his disposal - the Russian Historical Society (positioned as the successor to the Russian Historical Society founded in 1866) and the state fund "History of the Fatherland" (created as a tool for financing historical interventions by Putin's decree in 2016). 

The RHS immediately set up its branches in the occupied territories of Ukraine, and on 30 May 2024, at an off-site meeting in Simferopol, approved the creation of a full-fledged branch in the Kherson region. They consider this work so important that even during the active phase of the war, they are investing in it. Interesting, why? 

Incidentally, the branch of Naryshkin’s RHS in Simferopol is headed by the director of the Central Museum of Taurida, Andrei Malgin (the same one who fought for 9 years for the return of "Scythian gold" to Crimea, justified the Russian occupation, and discredited Ukraine in every possible way. It is he who has been entrusted with storing the valuables stolen from Kherson museums). In Sevastopol, there is significant museum construction underway. Among other things, they are organizing the "first museum of the history of new regions." 

Museums act as direct operators of SVR efforts. In 2023, the Association of Historical and Military-Historical Museums was created to further streamline the processes. By the way, since 2021, Naryshkin has chaired the board of trustees of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, participates in its work, and highlights this activity. The Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives (established in 2021, supervised by Sergei Kiriyenko) and the Presidential Grants Fund (established in 2017) also contribute to financing subversive museum projects (particularly concerning Donbas). 

For illustration, in early April (!!!) 2022, Naryshkin initiated the creation of an inter-museum group under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation (which included more than 10 federal organizations) to collect exhibits about the course of the "Special Military Operation" (SMO). In May 2022, they already launched the exhibition project "Ordinary Nazism" (this concentrated propaganda has already been received in more than 20 cities in Russia). They are honing their narrative about the war and pushing it abroad. The operator is the RHS, three federal museums, funded by the "History of the Fatherland" fund and the Presidential Grants Fund. 

In April 2023, Putin ordered the creation of an "SMO museum" in every region. Under Naryshkin’s leadership, methodological recommendations for creating exhibitions were developed. Everything will be uniform, according to the party's general line. Such museums are now opening in large numbers. 

Photo: Typical Propaganda "SMO Museum" in Totalitarian Russia

Interestingly, in one of his 2023 interviews, boasting about this work, Naryshkin noted that the trial step in creating a museum about the war in Donbas was made in 2016... based on the "Night Wolves" group in Luhansk. Recently, I described how the "Night Wolves," overseen by the SVR, tried to create a European headquarters in Slovakia based on a private military equipment museum. Such hybrid work is an SVR template. 

Thus, de facto, any Russian museum activity abroad is either under the direct instruction of the SVR or within the framework of SVR efforts. 

Since 2022, this activity has been systematically redirected south and east. Russia is now generating museum projects with countries whose names were previously unknown in Russia. This is a way to establish a special level of contact with local elites. And this is not spontaneous. In 2017… the BRICS Museums Association was established. In 2018, the BRICS Art Museums and Galleries Alliance was launched. The support structure on the Russian side is the State Museum of the East (the board of trustees is chaired by the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev; also on the board is such a character as the head of Rossotrudnichestvo, Yevgeny Primakov, and others). 

Obviously, all these accumulating structures work with varying returns, some merely consuming resources. The fact is, they generate activity on an industrial scale. And some achieve effect. Especially where we have a void, and they have support at the highest political level. 

Interestingly, with one hand through museums, the Kremlin tries to open a window to the west. And with the other hand, through the same museums, it slightly tugs at the "decolonization" discourse. Because the wonderful museums of any empire are always partly the result of plundering colonies and dependent territories. And on this basis, it is easy to find points of contact in those countries that want to monetize claims against former metropolises. 

The fact that top Russian museums are also products of imperial plunder is not mentioned. And it is easier to do this because Russia mainly plundered "internal colonies." But there is a front of work for us here. In other words, we are dealing with a complex policy of transforming Russian museums into tools of warfare, serving the war. 

What to do about this? 

At a minimum, it is necessary to warn colleagues worldwide that Russian museums are committing three types of crimes.

First, they are directly involved in the looting of individual Ukrainian museums and the appropriation of all museum heritage in the occupied territories (regarding this, Russia adopted a federal law in March 2023). 

Second, they are directly involved in inciting aggressive war and justifying war crimes. The most "vivid" role here is played by historical museums. For example, the State Historical Museum, through the "Novorossiya" project and the "Cossack Museum," justifies the thesis about "primordially Russian lands" (this work is funded by Naryshkin’s "History of the Fatherland" fund and... the fund of the notorious propagandist Vladimir Solovyov). The entire hierarchy, from metropolitan to municipal museums, participates in justifying the war. 

All are involved in "normalizing" the occupation - the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, Peterhof, the Polytechnic Museum, the Russian Ethnographic Museum, the Tula Museum of Weapons, and others - all the top ones. Their employees visit the occupied territories and are already liable for this. 

Third, they are directly involved in the destruction of Ukrainian identity, which is a qualifying feature of genocide. 

For example, the "Victory Museum" (1941-45) and the Museum of Contemporary Russian History aggressively create the groundwork for "denazification." Among other things, the "Victory Museum" oversees the "School Victory Museum" project, through which children's brains are washed throughout Russia, and now they have reached the occupied territories (with the support of Kiriyenko’s fund). 

To understand what St. Petersburg schoolchildren were fed on 19 April 2024, on the so-called "Day of Unified Actions in Memory of the Genocide of the Soviet People during the Great Patriotic War" (the project is overseen by the RHS): "...History repeats itself. The heirs of those punishers, Banderites, and traitors again commit atrocities on the land of Donbas and Ukraine, maiming and shooting captured soldiers..." 

Russian museums inspire and cover all the above. 

Going to Moscow in such a situation is like visiting Goebbels and Hitler (known benefactors of museums, albeit a bit peculiar!), because they cannot be "excluded." 

At a minimum, steps should be taken so that our respected partners cannot say they "did not know" about this... In the long run, all Russian war criminals from museums must be held accountable, and the most rabid ones must lose the right to their profession. 

Those who cooperate with them now must realize that there are not only primary but also secondary sanctions. Which will inevitably entail both material and reputational losses.