On February, 5 Victor Melnikov, the son of the great architect Konstantin Melnikov and the guardian of his house (Krivoarbatsky lane, 10) died (see obituary on February, 7 2006 in KOMMERSANT). This house, a masterpiece of the Russian Avant Garde, is included in any textbook on architecture of the XXth century. Victor Melnikov bequeathed the half of house that belonged to him, and all its contents, to the Russian Federation with the condition that it would be turned into a museum. The second half of house belonged to his nephew Alexey Ilkanaev. However a document obtained by KOMMERSANT on March, 6, 2006 from the Unified State Register testifies, that Mr Ilkanaev is no longer proprietor of the house. He sold his half to Mr Gordeyev.

 

Sergey Gordeyev  is a conspicuous figure. He is the youngest member of the Federation Council (he is 34). He is the Senator representing the Ust-Ordyn Buryat autonomous region, the Deputy General Director of the National Union of Judo, and the founder of the company ROSBUILDING. His interest in the Russian Avant Garde was revealed only recently – two weeks ago he gave an interview to newspaper, NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA under the title “Preserving an original line in Russian architecture” in which he confessed his love for Russian Constructivism, in particular the Melnikov House and Narkomfin by Moisej Ginzburg (the second most famous masterpiece of Soviet architecture). In this interview he expressed his desire to take care of these houses, and stated that he is supported by Duma Deputy Iosif Kobzon, and Moskomarkhitectura. He was silent about his purchase of half of the Melnikov House.

 

David Sarkisyan, the Director of the Architecture Museum, (and under orders by the Ministry of Culture to manage the situation around the Melnikov House) reacted excitedly and positively when KOMMERSANT’s correspondent asked him to characterize the new owner of the house. According to Mr Sarkisyan, Iosif Kobzon requested him to receive the young senator. Sergey Gordeyev, brilliantly erudite in the history of art, gothic architecture and Vermeer, suggested dramatically increasing the financing of the State Architecture Museum. Together with Sergey Eduardovich the Museum intends to create a Foundation of Russian Avant Garde Architecture, which will certainly include the Melnikov House, and, if possible, Narkomfin, and Melnikov’s works. Mr Gordeyev also expressed a lively desire to help the Museum purchase the archives of other well-known avant-gardists from their heirs. I have never seen the Director of the State Architecture Museum in such a state of high enthusiasm.

 

The company ROSBUILDING of which the senator is the founder and was the formal director until 2003, is a group of so-called ‘raiders’. (After 2003 Mr Gordeyev exchanged his position as director of the company to become Deputy Dean of the Academy of Management in the city of Tolyatti and then went on to represent the entire region in the Senate). His company’s speciality is the takeover of enterprises, followed by shutting them down and the subsequent sale of the land. Several dozen enterprises in Moscow have had this treatment. For some time it operated independently from the Moscow government. In 2004 when ROSBUILDING acquired the Piotr Alekseev factory, it entered into a conflict with the Moscow Government. Mayor Yuri Luzhkov accused Rosbuilding of undermining the industrial potential of the city. However the conflict was resolved to the pleasure of both parties and last year the First Vice Mayor, Vladimir Resin, announced Rosbuilding the main developer of the Marfino district, where it is provisioned to pull down shabby city quarters, move out the inhabitants and erect new buildings.

 

However Senator Gordeyev has bought only half of the Melnikov House, while the other half according to Victor Melnikov's will now belongs to the Russian Federation. Nevertheless a week after Victor’s death, a court hearing took place at which his property rights were challenged. According to Yekaterina Karinskaya, Victor’s daughter and the legal executor of his will, her younger sister, Yelena, is demanding that a document presenting her with the house signed in 2003, should be recognizes as valid.

 

Here it is necessary to remind readers that two years ago in the presence of correspondents from newspapers THE NEW YORK TIMES, VREMYA NOVOSTEI and KOMMERSANT, Victor Melnikov accused his younger daughter Elena of deceitfully obtaining this document from him. He was practically blind and claims that she gave him papers to sign saying that they were one thing and then it turned out that he had signed his part of the house over to her. Victor Melnikov personally challenged this contract in court, and won the case, and the decision of the court has entered legal validity. Elena is appealing against this in the High Courts.

 

The first court hearing to deprive a dead man of his property rights ended with no decision – the session was postponed until March 16. It is necessary to say, that it is a unique situation – the court to all intents and purposes is moving towards a decision to take away the property from the State, to which Victor Melnikov has bequeathed all his belongings. It is a rare case in the history of the Russian legal proceedings that the judicial machine operates against the State for the benefit of a certain private person. Simultaneously a criminal case has been opened against the doctor ophthalmologist Alexander Verzin who used to treat Victor Melnikov and testified in court his total blindness. He is being accused of giving false testimony – although a large number of people including the author of this text can testify that Victor Melnikov by the end of his life was practically blind.

 

According to Ekaterina Karinskaya, senator Gordeyev urgently asked her not to interfere with her sister winning the case. After the achievement of the desired court decision he is going to buy out the share of Elena and, by becoming the owner of the house as a whole, finally he intends to execute Victor Melnikov's will to create a Museum. However, it will not be a State, but a private Museum.

 

The actions of Senator Gordeyev to get control on the Melnikov House are reminiscent in all details of a typical raider’s operation – the purchase of part of a property from one of the owners, court cases against other owners, promises of financial prospects to interested parties (ie his tactics with the Architecture Museum). But all this does not prove that he is not going to do make a Melnikov Museum. After all, everybody acts according to their knowledge and habits.

 

But there is another possible outcome. In an interview given to KOMMERSANT, the Chief Architect of Moscow Alexander Kuzmin spoke about the problems with Russian Constructivist buildings in general. “These buildings – mainly apartment houses – are in a very bad condition, they have to be demolished, but they are listed as monuments, and though it is very painful we are moving towards a decision of this problem.”

 

The Melnikov House occupies 800 square metres site in the Arbat area. That equals thirty to forty million US dollars. And there are many examples of these things work in the capital. A private structure appears and buys an apartment from some old woman in a little mansion in the city centre for a sum hundreds of times smaller than the cost of the ground on which it stands. Then the court cases with the other owners begin. Then there will be an accident, a fire for example. And then some bureaucrat or other will sadly say: “Well, what do you want! Misfortune struck! But we promise to restore everything and that it will be even better than before the fire!” And a fake imitation of the lost monument is built, and behind it an eight-story house is erected as the “investment component” of the project.

 

There is not a single example of things going any other way in Moscow, not one scientific restoration, no conservations or creations of museums – only so-called “reconstructions”, ie, the replacement of the original building with a fake replica. I will allow myself to remind readers, that although Iosif Kobzon is part of Russia’s cultural legacy, according to the newspaper VEDOMOSTI he owned part of the shares of the joint-stock company VOYENTORG [Military department store – a fine Art Nouveau building] just before this listed building on Vozdvizhenka Street was demolished in 2004. I fear that if we are dealing with the usual scheme and if my analogy, God forbid, is true, then the Melnikov House will disappear. Instead of it a business center will appear, in the glass roofed atrium of which a concrete model of the Melnikov House will stand. It is not excluded that inside that replica will be a small museum.