Under the protection of the museum department: the fates of estate collections in Moscow oblast and of their owners after the 1917 revolution

The study aims to systematize the processes that took place after the 1917 Revolution with collections of art, books and other cultural property located in the noble estates of Moscow Oblast. The materials were documents stored in the State Archive of the Russian Federation and the Central State Archive of Literature and Art, monographs and articles by researchers on the history of estates near Moscow in the 19th and 20th centuries. Historical-systemic, comparative and other methods applied in historical research were used. The study notes that estates near Moscow and collections of art works located in them during the events of the 1917 Revolution were rarely plundered by peasants. The author describes the role of former owners of estates as curators and managers of museums that subsequently arose on the basis of estates; analyzes the process of registering and describing property located in estates near Moscow; characterizes the works of art and historical artifacts that belonged to the former owners and the subsequent history of the collections, which, as a rule, became part of the museum fund of Soviet Russia. In some cases, the author comments on the fate of the former owners. The study focuses on the Moscow Oblast estates of the Uvarovs (Porechye), the Shcherbatovs (Brattsevo), the Sheremetevs (Vvedenskoye), the Olsufievs (Ershovo), and others. In total, the author briefly characterizes the post-revolutionary history of about one and a half dozen estates near Moscow and their collections. The forms of adaptation of estates for public and state needs, which became widespread in the post-revolutionary period, are diverse, and the author identifies and summarizes them in a table. The several important trends related to the subsequent fate of cultural values that were part of the Moscow Oblast estate collections the author identified are: (1) conflict-free relations between landlords and peasants had a positive impact on the preservation of the estate heritage of Moscow Oblast; (2) the so-called “museums of landlord life” (“museums of the nobility”), which existed in the first years of the Soviet power, became widespread in the region; however, this trend did not develop further: over the following ten years, most of these museums were closed due to ideological inconsistency; (3) the last owners of estates played a major role in preserving cultural values at the beginning of the Revolution. Thanks to their contribution, unique cultural values that were previously part of estate collections today adorn exhibitions of the best museums in the country