History and memorial museum will become an education and culture center
Russia and Ukraine commemorate Viktor Chernomyrdin, who died last year. Chernomyrdin was the head of the Minister Council in 1992-1993, and from 1993 to 1998 was the Russian prime minister. In 2001-2009 he occupied the post of Russian ambassador to Ukraine. Later he became a presidential adviser on economic cooperation with CIS countries. The memorial museum honoring this extraordinary political figure will be organized in his native village, Cherniy Otrog. The creators of the museum commented on their work:
Vitaliy Chernomyrdin, the President of the Chernomyrdin Regional Public Fund, Viktor Chernomyrdin’s elder son:
The idea of creating this museum isn’t new. It first occurred to us in 2006, when Viktor Stepanovich decided to create a museum of his native village, Cherniy Otrog, in a surviving building of the Soviet district committee, a building that he himself helped to construct when he was a school boy. We started to work on the museum back then, but after Viktor’s death we decided to make this museum historic as well as memorial, and the villagers as well as the district’s administration supported this idea. The museum will not only serve as a memorial to Viktor Stepanovich, but will also tell the story of the Cossacks who settled in this region some 200 years ago. We created the general conception of this new museum last October, and now we are at last close to its realization. From the very beginning we didn’t want this memorial complex to be just a museum; we wanted it to be an educational center. We decided to create the Chernomyrdin Educational Center, based on already-existing education establishments of the village. This idea was supported by the Russian President, with “Gazprom” providing financing.Construction has already begun. I hope we’ll complete it in time for Viktor’s 75th anniversary, that is, in two years.
Andrey Sorokin, the Chernomyrdin History and Memorial Museum CEO: It the first time in the most recent history of Russia that we are creating a new town-forming organization that is not connected to industry or agriculture, but is a cultural and educational center. Actually, two establishments will be created: firstly, there is the Chernomyrdin Educational Center and secondly the Chernomyrdin History and Memorial Museum. Today I would like to tell you about the museum. This museum is going to combine the traits of historic, memorial and regional studies and technical museums. The building of the Gevrilov Soviet district committee was donated to the museum, and we are very proud of it, as it is the building that Chernomyrdin himself chose to host a local history museum. This building will host the museum’s administration and some holdings. The floorspace of this building is 800 square meters. We are planning to construct a new three-storey building of 7,200 square meters. The project of this building is being developed by architect Igor Serov. The ground floor will be occupied with holdings equipped according to the latest standards. The first floor will host an automobile exposition and an educational center for our youngest visitors – we are writing special educational programs now. A modern cinema hall for 430 viewers will also be located on this floor. The second floor will also be occupied by the educational center and will also host our library, that has Chernomyrdin’s personal collection of books, some of them are true rarities, like the first edition of “And Quiet Flows the Don”, or the latest facsimile reproduction of the same novel’s typescript, the original of which was returned to Russia thanks to Chernomyrdin’s efforts. A cafeteria with glass walls that will allow the visitors to view the automobile collection as well as the village’s panorama will also be situated on this floor. The third floor will host different expositions dedicated to Chernomyrdin’s biography and local history. Almost all pieces were donated by Chernomyrdin’s family, friends and neighbors.
The museum will have various exhibits, everything from automobiles to archives and orders. Viktor Stepanovich is one of the 8 people who were decorated with all 4 grades of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland. He was decorated by many other Russian and foreign orders. Personal archives of Viktor Chernomyrdin will form the basis of our exposition. They contain official data, as well as his personal journals dating back to his time at school. The archives of the political movement “Our home – Russia” that was headed by Chernomyrdin were also donated to our museum. Of course, we will offer our visitors Chernomyrdin’s lectures as well. Viktor wasn’t a professional collector, so all his collections were formed somewhat spontaneously. For example, his painting collection: some pieces were given to him by his friends, some were bought or ordered by him. He often ordered portraits of his close ones to decorate his home. He also ordered portraits of prominent Russian political figures – Peter the Great, Alexander II, Peter Stolypin, Alexei Kosygin – to decorate his office. His collection has a lot of pictures by lesser artists of the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries.
Apart from the painting collection, the museum possesses Chernomyrdin’s weapons collection. Viktor came from a Cossack family and he was decorated with the rank of colonel of the Orenburg Cossack Host and of general of the Zaporozhsk Cossack Host. He loved arms and was a good expert in them. He had a huge collection of bladed weapons and firearms. He loved testing new pieces of his collection – sometimes not without incidents. He had some collector's guns, like the one made by Boss&Co in 1911. This company, founded in 1812, is one of the oldest producers of hunting guns in England. The collection also includes a unique triple-barreled pistol made exclusively for pilots in case they would have to land somewhere in an unpopulated wilderness. Another interesting piece of this collection is the hunting carbine that was given to Chernomyrdin for his 60th birthday by Russian President Yeltsin. All the favourite hobbies of Viktor Chernomyrdin were truly manly: hunting, arms collecting and cars. We possess a large collection of Viktor Chernomyrdin’s automobiles, some of them are classics of their times, some of them are very rare. The car that was the first one in his collection was his father’s “GAZ AA”. He had to buy it from the Orenburg collective farm and then restore it literally from scratch. But this car reminded him of the happiest moments of his childhood. Chernomyrdin liked to take this car for a ride, and you can imagine how astonished was a police officer who stopped this old car to check papers and recognized the driver as the ex-head of the Russian Government. When Chernomyrdin asked him why he had stopped the car, he could only answer that he wanted to get a closer look at such a rarity. The collection comprises a lot of newer models of unmarked cars as well. It includes two “ZiL-110”, the first post-war Soviet luxury cars, one of them of standard issue, the other one – a special model for parades. There’s also the most beautiful and secure unmarked car “ZiL-41047” that was assembled by hand. Alexei Lebedev, the head of the Russian Culturology Institute Museum Planning Workshop: We are facing an extraordinary task, as there has never existed such a thing as a “history and memorial museum” before. If you look up it in the Russian museums guide, you’ll see that there are a lot of history museums, local history museums, technical museums, memorial museums, but there are no “history and memorial museums”. But in this case you can’t separate the two. Look for yourselves: it is widely-known that in June 1995 Chernomyrdin managed negotiate the freedom of 1,500 civilians from the town of Budenovsk who were held hostage by Shamil Basayev’s terrorist group. So is it a fact of Chernomyrdin’s biography, or is it an historical event? Clearly, it is both. This person’s biography is tightly entangled with Russia’s recent history. That is why the museum has to be a “history and memorial” one.
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