Yeltsin Center exhibition. See you in the USSR! “There is not a single false note in the Yeltsin Center exhibition.”
Modern Museum, equipped with last word technology, as well as major cultural and Education Centre In Ekaterinburg. It attracts intelligent, cultured and progressive people. He has no equal either in Yekaterinburg or in the Urals as a whole. Installations, videos, objects that simulate the environment, interactive exhibits that interact with the visitor - all this arouses admiration and remains in the memory for a long time.
The Yeltsin Center opened on November 25, 2015. The location of the Yeltsin Center is no coincidence. Sverdlovsk region is the birthplace of B.N. Yeltsin, and his political career began in Sverdlovsk.
History of the Yeltsin Center
Yeltsin Center building - from complicated history. Its construction began in 2006 by entrepreneur Mars Sharafulin as the largest business center in Yekaterinburg with the Demidov Plaza congress hall. It was planned to be used during the 2009 SCO summit, but the facility could not be completed on time. In 2008, the building was taken over by UMMC, but construction soon stopped.
In 2011, the Yeltsin Center bought part of the Demidov business center for 2 billion rubles. In the spring of 2013, work began on the creation of the Yeltsin Center. In total, the costs of creating the Yeltsin Center amounted to 7 billion rubles, of which 2 billion were received as a loan from the budget Sverdlovsk region.
The creation of the museum's exposition was carried out by the American Agency museum design Ralph Appelbaum, who won the competition. Director Pavel Lungin also took part in the development of the concept of the museum (exhibition “Seven Days”):
“When I visited the site of the future museum, I saw an unfinished mass of a building with a round washer in the middle, where the wind was blowing. I realized that the puck should be cut like a pie - into seven days, seven moments in life. I wanted to take on the difficult days when Yeltsin was in critical situations, because it is a property of his character to overcome crises. The result is a story about seven days that changed Russia. Each room is one day, and in each there is information around this day, which at the same time tells a story from the life of Boris Nikolaevich.”
During the first year of operation of the museum, more than 250 thousand people visited it.
The Yeltsin Center is actively criticized by many people (99% of whom have never been there), and this is aggravated by state propaganda. It is now very fashionable to criticize Yeltsin, the 90s and Freedom in general among poorly educated people.
Boris Yeltsin Museum
At the entrance to the Yeltsin Center, the first exhibit is greeted - the Chaika car, which Boris Yeltsin once drove. Near the ticket office there is a stand with gifts for the first president.
The Boris Yeltsin Museum itself consists of nine halls. Let's look at each of them.
Labyrinth
Before entering the Labyrinth of History, visitors are shown a cartoon about the history of Freedom in Russia.
In the Labyrinth itself a chronicle appears Russian history from 1914 to 1987, and also tells about the history of the Yeltsin family.
Here are archival photographs, posters, footage from feature films those years.
At the end there is a letter from M.S. Gorbachev, in which the first secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU, Boris Yeltsin, demands that the process of perestroika be accelerated.
The exhibition “Seven Days That Changed Russia” is dedicated to further events. Its concept was invented by director Pavel Lungin.
"Seven days that changed Russia"
The exhibition “Seven Days” tells about the stages of creation new Russia. She talks about major events: from the October Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee in 1987 to Yeltsin’s voluntary resignation as president. Seven metaphorical days are Russia’s path from totalitarian state to parliamentary and presidential elections, to freedom of speech and private property.
In each room there are cabinets with screens where you can view documents, listen to speeches, and memories.
The first day. "We are waiting for changes!"
At the beginning, the Marble Hall of the Kremlin is reproduced with the coat of arms of the USSR, a podium and carpet paths, where on October 22, 1987 B.N. Yeltsin made his famous speech at the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee. You can stop and listen to the audio recording of the speech.
Portraits of members of the Politburo also hang here. You can turn them over and read critical statements about Yeltsin's speech.
Next - about the Moscow period of Yeltsin’s life. Here, unexpectedly, a real trolleybus appears with Moscow views from the window (Yeltsin sometimes went to work by public transport). You can sit and watch there short film about Boris Yeltsin. The stands clearly tell about cultural life and the atmosphere of that time (late 1980s - early 1990s) - about rock music, theaters, festivals, etc. You can even watch a concert by Viktor Tsoi.
Second day. August putsch
Suddenly you find yourself in a typical Soviet apartment. On the calendar August 19, 1991. The ballet is shown on TV Swan Lake" Suddenly the phone rings and they talk with alarm about what is happening on the streets of Moscow.
Having opened the door, you find yourself on the barricades around the White House... On big screen show what was happening at that time in the center of the capital. And at the stands there are speeches by the organizers of the GKChP putsch.
The museum also displays a large historical tricolor flag, raised over the Kremlin on December 25, 1991. He became a symbol of resistance to the State Emergency Committee during the August putsch.
Day three. Unpopular measures
You find yourself in a store from the early 1990s with empty shelves. There is a food crisis in the country. There is only Far Eastern seaweed salad and birch sap in a large glass jar.
There are also holographic copies of members of Gaidar’s government talking about economic prospects, privatization checks and even an economic game.
Things from a bygone era evoke nostalgia: Tetris, tape recorders and VCRs, video and audio cassettes, the Dandy console; TV shows broadcast programs and series from the 1990s.
Day four. Birth of the Constitution
Despite winning the 1993 referendum, the country finds itself on the brink civil war. There is a coup attempt. The museum reproduces the studio of the Ostankino television center, which was stormed by the rebels.
Day five. "Vote or lose"
The history of the 1996 presidential elections and the difficult election campaign. Old computers, telephones with stories from those days, campaign materials and an election ballot. You can also see dolls from the program of the same name on the then, present NTV.
The story also tells about the bloody war in Chechnya.
Day six. Presidential Marathon
Here we talk about Boris Yeltsin's heart surgery. Next is a recording studio where you can listen to Yeltsin’s speeches or record your own. Diagrams with economic indicators of Russia (the country experienced a default in 1998). In this room there is a window from which you can see the Church on the Blood, standing on the site of Ipatiev’s house, which was demolished by Yeltsin’s decision (when he worked as secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee).
Information about possible successors to the president is also provided, and a “nuclear suitcase” is also presented.
Day seven. Farewell to the Kremlin
The presidential office in the Kremlin has been recreated. B.N.’s New Year’s address sounds. Yeltsin in 1999, in which he gave up power...
In the cabinet behind the glass: employment history first president, pension certificate, award certificates.
The last room where you can listen to speeches famous people about Freedom. There are five pillars with screens, divided thematically: “Freedom of enterprise”, “Freedom of movement”, “Freedom of assembly and association”, “Freedom of thought and speech”, “Freedom of conscience”. In a special booth you can write down your appeal.
In the center of the hall on the second floor of the museum, on the so-called “presidential square”, life-size Boris Nikolaevich himself sits on a bench. You can take a photo or a selfie next to the bronze monument.
A more or less careful acquaintance with the museum takes at least 4-5 hours. And to see everything that is in the museum (including numerous audio, video, various materials), then the whole day is not enough. The museum leaves a lasting impression. The only minor disadvantages include the idealization of Yeltsin’s image.
What else?
On November 25, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev will open the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg, created in pursuance of a 2008 decree. Shortly before the ceremony, Lenta.ru had the opportunity to evaluate the exhibition of the first memorial museum and archive complex, dedicated to the first to the President of Russia. The creators of the museum offer their own view of the history of the country, which is sure to evoke polar responses.
The bright orange sweater on the first museum stand attracts almost more attention than the huge two-handed sword, one and a half tall, located to the left of it. The sweater, unlike a VIP souvenir, has been part of Boris Yeltsin’s permanent wardrobe since it was given to him for his birthday. “So that you feel warm and comfortable in it. And his Orange color- a hint of what we lack now in Russia,” says the accompanying note with the signature “Yours, Boris Nemtsov” (apparently, by that time he was already an adviser in the office of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko).
The lack of engagement is what people pay attention to here almost more often than the multimedia museum content of the Yeltsin Center, unprecedented in Russia, and the scale of the work done. “You, of course, understand that in a museum that was buttoned up and went through political censorship, nothing like this would exist,” emphasizes Lyudmila Telen, deputy executive director of the B.N. Presidential Center. Yeltsin. “There was no preliminary showing to officials either: you see everything first, two days before the opening.”
22 thousand square meters joint work of a group of American museum workers from the Ralph Applebaum company, Tatyana Yumasheva’s team and attracted Russian figures culture: from Eric Bulatov, the author of the “Freedom” panel (in blue and white - going into a very distant future) to Pavel Lungin, who came up with the basis of the museum - seven days of the 1990s and a story about each of them.
Then Mikhail Speransky under Alexander the First - and the constitution, which the tsar “was never able to offer to society.” The Decembrist uprising and another 30 years of Russian history were located in one period: “The next emperor made a choice in favor of unlimited autocracy and followed it until his death. The finale of the reign of Nicholas I was a humiliating defeat in Crimean War and a severe crisis." More attention is paid to the reforms of Alexander II, who made “an attempt to transform Russian autocracy into the European political regime." According to historians, voiced by Elizaveta Boyarskaya, this emperor “died not for reforms, but for renouncing them.” Nicholas II adopted the constitution - but “the short-lived rise was interrupted by the First World War.”
Not a word about the first Russian democratic government - the Provisional - just the Bolsheviks. “Violence became the main political instrument of the post-revolutionary regime,” describes the period of Joseph Stalin. And then: “Not the party leaders, but ordinary people They did everything to ensure that this era went down in history not only with the Gulag, but also with the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, Magnitka, the conquest of the Arctic, and an unimaginable labor upsurge that cannot be explained by fear. It’s possible - by faith in your country.” Khrushchev “freed society from fear.” Brezhnev - “The era of stagnation. The country received its next chance to return to the civilized world 20 years later, when Gorbachev came to power.” The country, however, needed a leader of a different type: “Boris Yeltsin risked relying not on personal power, but on the independent choice of citizens. Thus began the history of a new one, free Russia».
This is where the cartoon ends and the story itself begins, to which the museum of the B.N. Presidential Center is dedicated. Yeltsin: not power, but choice. It all begins, as expected, with Yeltsin’s speech at the 1987 plenum. The chairs are like in that hall, the podium, and the USSR coat of arms on it is completely real - rescued from the 14th building of the Kremlin, which underwent reconstruction. From there he moved to the Yeltsin Center and the main exhibit of the seventh day - resignation, "Take care of Russia": the first office of the first president - an armchair, telephones, a table. From time to time the lights in the office go out, and the same speech is heard from the studio monitor: “I’m tired, I’m leaving.” The nuclear suitcase handed over to the successor is right there, nearby: also an original, like almost everything here, from documents to artifacts. The case is Western-made, from Samsonite. I would like to hope that since the time of Boris Nikolayevich, import substitution at least in this area has reached one hundred percent.
The entire museum can be explored in an hour and a half; Film director Lungin's concept corresponds to a medium-sized film. Each event is in three dimensions, as in modern cinema: here is propaganda, here is evidence, and next to it are official documents, sometimes declassified or found. If you want to dig deeper, you will have to literally delve into the fourth dimension: under each stand there is a retractable panel with additional materials. The creators of the museum assure that it is there that opponents of Boris Yeltsin can find a lot of what they - judging by social networks- what is missing in advance in the “Yeltsin Center”: the “seven bankers” and refugees, the New Year’s assault on Grozny and the Xerox box, the impoverishment of people and the crimson jackets of those who for the most part remained in the 90s. “My family donated all the family archive. This is a whole selection of leaflets, newspapers, clippings, photographs, books from 1991-1993,” says publicist Kirill Shulika. - Some of the materials are in the archives of the Yeltsin Center, some are on its website, some are on display. Many brought their artifacts from the 90s here. Thus, the result was not a Yeltsin museum, but a museum of the era in which Yeltsin was one of the heroes, and the main characters were simple people. And they deserve to be in the same halls as strongmen of the world this."
There are really a lot of documents. There are some touching ones - especially if you look at them a quarter of a century later. “What do you like to play?” - they ask B.N. in 1990, employees of one of the Soviet magazines for children. “Lapta, football, volleyball,” Yeltsin replies. Before tennis- as before big politics- there were a few years left.
Day two - the August putsch: a barricade in a semicircle, a video on half a high wall and stands with personal belongings of the White House defenders: “Hotel “At the Dead Mountaineer”” by the Strugatskys - a book by Vladimir Usov, one of the three who died in those days. Day three - “Unpopular measures”: a hall with an empty counter - cans of birch sap, piles of seaweed salad, screens with queues, and nothing more. A little further - economic reforms. "And here interactive game“How to invest a voucher correctly,” points out Lyudmila Telen. Replay own story None of those present decided to privatize.
At a distance is a unique 3D installation: three fathers of Russian economic reform - Andrei Nechaev, Anatoly Chubais, Pyotr Aven - talk about why everything turned out this way and not otherwise. The holograms are located behind glass, optically ten to fifteen meters from the visitors: either “they are terribly far from the people,” or the organizers of the Yeltsin Center have a good idea of the people’s reactions. But the checkered “shuttle” bag - the breadwinner of many - is in a separate place of honor, close and completely natural. However, the Yeltsin Center itself will have to show in the coming years how much it has mastered the principles of a market economy: in the body of budget financing there is not only 4 billion 980 million rubles for the development of the complex, but also a two billion loan. The center will have to give it away, earning money from offices and other areas of the huge building, while financing it independently own projects. At least that's how it's intended.
Day four - "The Birth of the 1993 Constitution" and day five - "Vote or Lose" - will most likely cause greatest number disputes. First of all, the interpretation that was chosen at the Yeltsin Center. It is simple: do not interpret, do not evaluate even the most dramatic events. October 1993 - installation: a broken equipment room in Ostankino, a pile of police shields, video from the streets and 127 shell casings - according to the number of deaths. Elections of 1996 - dolls from the program of the same name: B.N., Gennady Zyuganov, Alexander Lebed - and the typical metropolitan edition of the mid-90s. The first Chechen one is a blood-red room, parallel to the “editorial office”: in the bullet holes there are photos from “Memorial”, in the niches there are combat boots and a uniform from Major Vyacheslav Izmailov, who exchanged captured soldiers, including for ammunition. In any case, for those who will arrange the second theme Chechen war in one of the next presidential centers (and, logically, at least two more should appear: “Putin Center” and “Medvedev Center”), there will be something to build on.
The hall dedicated to the Constitution of the Russian Federation itself is another huge video wall. Here everything is according to the articles of the basic law - an island of certainty in a world devoid of interpretations. Ivan Urgant talks from the wall about the prohibition of discrimination based on nationality, and Avdotya Smirnova talks about the protection of private property rights by law. And immunity privacy proclaims Mikhail Zhvanetsky.
In the sixth hall “Presidential Marathon” - the second term. With heart surgery and multi-colored oil price quotes superimposed on the view outside the window: the Yekaterinburg Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood becomes a full-fledged part of the exhibition about the man who first destroyed the Ipatiev House and then buried royal family. And, of course, with the search for a successor - a gallery of portraits (Luzhkov, Primakov, Aksenenko...) and the transfer of that very suitcase.
The exit from Yeltsin's office is only through the Freedom Hall. More precisely, video colonnades of freedoms: thought and speech, meetings and associations, conscience and religion, movement, entrepreneurship. “The number of columns allows each visitor to choose a suitable fifth one,” the Yeltsin Center points out. You can laugh. And at the same time, argue again about what is more suitable for Russia - a democratic horizontal path or a centralized vertical path of development.
What is undeniable, however, is that for the first time in long years the existence of the USSR and Russia is embodied in the Yeltsin Center complex: continuity based on state-declared respect for the experience of its predecessor - respect materialized, formalized and impressive, like power itself. Either as two limousines of Boris Yeltsin, the first secretary of the Sverdlovsk region and the first president of Russia, placed here according to the American model, or as a natural Moscow trolleybus included in the exhibition, similar to the one in which the future head of state communicated with the people in the 1980s. By the way, big question, which looks more organic here.
Ekaterinburg - Moscow
Actor and director Nikita Mikhalkov proposed to involve experts in resolving the dispute over the activities of the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg. According to him, the activities of the center need to be checked. The scandal surrounding the Yeltsin Center erupted after criticism of the director, who said that in the museum “injections of destruction of people’s self-awareness are carried out every day.” According to Interfax, Mikhalkov proposed involving a group of historians, political scientists and specialists in the analysis. “In my opinion, it is necessary to assemble a team of professionals - historians, political scientists and specialists who, after analyzing the entire exhibition, exhibits and activities of the museum, should make their own changes to it if they consider it necessary,” he noted after his Yeltsin's widow responded to the criticism. Let us recall that earlier Mikhalkov criticized the Yeltsin Center and the museum’s program. The director said that in the museum “every day injections of destruction of people’s self-consciousness are carried out.” Surprisingly, those who subject the best cultural and educational platform to harsh criticism, like Nikita Sergeevich, have never been to the Yeltsin Center... And here’s what the deputy director said about this National Institute development of modern ideology (NIRSI), political scientist Gleb Kuznetsov, who visited the Center personally.
“Unlike most of the Moscow participants in the discussion, I was at the Yeltsin Center. And this is what I want to tell you. The Yeltsin Center is, first of all, an excellent museum. Moreover, the museum is not Yeltsin’s at all. This historical Museum USSR – Russia.
The exhibition tries to explain - including through the life of Yeltsin, where without him - how it happened that we - Russia and the people inhabiting it - are exactly what we are today. And, I must say, the authors of the exhibition succeed in this.
There, along with documents about Stalin's repressions There are posters hanging: “The party said it is necessary, the Komsomol answered yes!” and “The CIA is an organizer of ideological sabotage.” The last one is a masterpiece. There is a cowboy with pistols, a dollar sign on his hat, an ax with the inscription “Seal” in his belt, and all wrapped in film with the mark “Hollywood”.
And then about space with Gagarin and about a crowded trolleybus. And about the great construction projects and about the fact that there is nothing in stores except seaweed. In the store you feel like in your own supermarket, in the meeting room of the Politburo - as if you were stuck between Slyunkov and Vorotnikov. The museum is brilliantly done.
Only “about Yeltsin” - a recreated office where they wrote down “I’m tired, I’m leaving.” So, one can also say this not about Yeltsin at all, but about us today, who arose from this fatigue and this departure.
The Yeltsin Center exhibition is my main museum impression over the past many, many years. It's about life. I didn't see a single false note in it.
Perhaps, to complete the picture, it would be nice to recreate the room at Peredelkino’s dacha. Somewhere between the construction site of socialism and an empty supermarket. “And so, children, our conscience lived – the creative intelligentsia.” Hang up all versions of the anthem, from the first to the current one, print out agreements on fees for the most obscure book from the “Fiery Bolsheviks” series. Give the whole picture of equality and justice Soviet life. But now I’m already grumbling.
This exhibition features newspaper clippings about the nightmare of the first war in Chechnya and election posters of Zhirinovsky wearing a Metallica T-shirt with the slogan “I’m the same as you!” - a very honest thing. It's rare that you can maintain honesty when talking about political history countries. The Yeltsin Center succeeded. The fact that this is being done with public money is doubly great. And the fact that outside of “greater Moscow” from Rublyovka to the Gulf of Finland is threefold.
In a world of 29 Panfilovites and 27 Baku commissars, in a country of noble and aristocratic families of myth-makers who for decades have been asserting the right to this very myth, explaining generations of people how and why they live, in a Moscow-centric and rank-worshipping world, the existence of a different cultural and historical policy is surprising . And wonderful.
On the Kurskaya metro station there is a quote from Mikhalkov’s anthem restored at state expense in huge gilded letters: “Stalin raised us to be loyal to the people.” So let there be at least something not from this opera two hours away from this happiness.”
