Import of Goodwill: Ex-expat fighting for Moscow’s buildings

Aerial View of Moscow From Beyond Stadium, file photo

(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Nathan Gray – November 19, 2013)

This year, as part of the Moskovskiye Novosti’s New Intelligentsia Awards, The Moscow News is giving out a special prize honoring expats who perform community service/work for public benefit in Russia. Our prize is called Import of Goodwill, and Clementine Cecil is one of the 2013 nominees.

A former Moscow-based journalist, Clementine Cecil found herself at the forefront of preservation activism after a series of demolitions of historic buildings. Now the director of Save Britain’s Heritage and Save Europe’s Heritage, also known as SAVE, she was one of the co-founders of the Moscow Architecture Preservation Society (MAPS) in 2005. She spoke with The Moscow News from London about preservation in Russia.

How did MAPS come about?

That was on the back of three big demolitions, or three big destructions of historic buildings, in the center of Moscow. The three were the destruction of Voyentorg on [Ulitsa] Vozdvizhenka, the demolition of the Hotel Moskva, and the final straw was the fire in the Manezh, which destroyed most of it.

The building I was living in in 2001 was demolished in 2003, and that really made me aware of the social issues around it, and then all of these high-profile cases – like the Moskva Hotel, the Manezh, etc. – made me more aware of the architectural side.

I had to leave because of the demolition [of my building]. It was not my flat, it was some friends’, and they were letting me live there, so really the eviction affected them much more, even though they’d already moved out by this time. But they lost this place.

There wasn’t a landmark of any kind, it was quite hard to find. So it was a secret place in a way that I knew about, and I felt that there was a certain secret life of Russians, a private life of Russians that was being completely bulldozed and violated by all these demolitions. Russians are always trying to find their own place outside of the state polemic, the political situation, so home life and private life are particularly valued there. It was hard to understand why it was happening. I wanted to understand, and that’s why I got involved in all this.

What does MAPS do?

We’re more about stopping demolition, and we’re more about raising awareness about the whole issue and about the potential of the buildings, and what the potential would be if they weren’t demolished.

But we don’t do any repair work ourselves, although we are starting to get involved with a bit of repair work in work with an organization called Obshchestvo Selskaya Tserkov (Village Church Society), who do emergency repairs on rural churches.

We’ve also taken quite a lot of experts out to Russia who know about repair, and we’ve put them together with people in Russia to help improve repair techniques.

What are the prospects for historical architecture in Moscow after ex-Mayor Yury Luzkhov?

I think that conservation has become more attractive, more interesting and more fashionable, and this is partly because of all this campaigning, but it’s also because people have become aware of what they’re losing.

People are starting the next chapter of history in Russia, and part of that is taking an inventory of what you have, so it’s looking around the city and looking at what you have and what you’re going to take with you into this next chapter, and that’s what they very much do at [Moscow architecture schools] Strelka and MARSh.

But also, I think it’s because the people running these schools are an older generation, who saw so much demolished, and they’re just interested in another way of doing things.

How has MAPS changed?

I think the main achievement of MAPS has been to give confidence to the local conservation movement, because when we started, there wasn’t that much going on, and now the campaign is really active.

We work in a different way now, we’re less of a day-to-day organization, we work project to project, so we work on reports. The unique thing that we bring is that we bring foreign experience and expertise to the Russian problems. It’s good for the Russians because it gives them an international platform, and it gives them access to wider expertise. It’s good for their morale as well, because they often say, “No one in Russia is interested,” so it’s really very heartening when people abroad are interested. The international platform is really important.

What is your involvement with Russia now?

I come about three times a year, and I used to spend more time, but because this job is a very small charity and it’s very demanding, I can’t travel quite so much.

We’re campaigning [in Georgia], and it was really great telling them about our Russian experience, because they were so interested, and it was highly relevant to what’s happening in Tbilisi.

I’m never going to stop working with Russia because that’s where I first got interested, that’s where I learned about the arguments to do with conservation. I have a lot of respect and admiration for the people working there now and historically, so I feel deeply committed to the situation in Russia.

In the end it’s about getting people to look more closely at the buildings that they’re surrounded by and becoming more aware of them, and you can’t legislate for that, so there’s always going to be room for a campaign.

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