The media recently published a statement by one of the heads of Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism concerning the possible return of 12th-century frescoes from St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Cathedral to Ukraine from the Russian State Hermitage. The transfer may take place before Dec. 22 — before the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Ukraine. Representatives of Russia Federal Culture Agency have confirmed the intention to return the St. Michael frescoes, which have been in Russia until now, and carry out an identification of their Ukrainian origin.
Additional details are contained in the following commentary by Serhii KOT, the head of the Research Center on Problems of the Return and Restitution of Cultural Values at the Institute of Ukrainian History at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The author was also a member of the Ukrainian delegation to the Ukrainian-Russian negotiations on the mosaics and frescoes of St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Cathedral, which were conducted in 1998-2003. He is one of the authors of expert materials being studied by the two states.
Beyond a doubt, one should welcome in every possible way the renewal of Ukrainian-Russian negotiations concerning the return to Ukraine of the artistic heritage of the cathedral that was destroyed in the 1930s. These negotiations were suspended and have not been held since 2003. The renewal of the negotiations gives one hope that they will be successfully completed in keeping with the principles of international legal norms and good will on each side.
The Ukrainian-Russian inter-state negotiations on the mosaics and frescoes of St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Cathedral, which are on the territory of the Russian Federation, began on Dec. 10, 1998. The negotiations were sparked by the informational-analytical materials on the circumstances in which the monuments of St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Cathedral were removed to Russia and the substantiation of legal grounds for their return and restitution to Ukraine, which were prepared by the Institute of Ukrainian History. The expert commission’s coordinated findings are the basis for passing decisions by the governments of Ukraine and Russia.
According to the protocol confirmed by the two sides, meetings of Ukrainian and Russian experts to discuss this subject were supposed to take place every six months. However, only two meetings have been held since the negotiations began — in October 1999 and October 2003 — when specialists’ discussions on the identification of the cultural values slated to be returned to Ukraine took place. The meetings were proceeding with difficulty, and the Ukrainian experts had to prepare additional justifications for each item.
However, according to their findings, both sides acknowledged the rightfulness of Ukraine’s claims to the frescoes from the walls of St. Michael’s Golden- Domed Cathedral, which are at the Hermitage. Ukrainian experts determined and proved that in the fall of 1943 the frescoes were removed from occupied Kyiv and shipped to Germany by the so-called Operational Headquarters of Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg. Later, they were found in the American Occupation Zone and were officially handed over by the US military to the representatives of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany. In late 1947-early 1948 these frescoes, together with other monuments belonging to St. Michael’s Cathedral, were shipped from Berlin to the USSR and ended up near Leningrad. Afterwards, they were brought to the Novgorod Museum of Regional History. In 1953, 11 frescoes were transferred from there to the Hermitage. On the grounds of the experts’ findings, four frescoes were returned to Ukraine in 2001 and seven items in 2004. They are now in the History Museum at St. Michael’s Golden- Domed Monastery.
According to the Ukrainian experts’ data acknowledged by the Russian side, no other frescoes from St. Michael’s were identified in the Hermitage. Therefore, statements about the identification and return of St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Cathedral frescoes from the Hermitage fonds by Dec. 22, 2006, are surprising and may not correspond to reality.
There are at least 15 original monuments of the artistic heritage of this 12th-century cathedral — mosaics, frescoes, and slate bas-reliefs — in the fonds of other Russian museums: the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow, the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Novgorod State United Museum- Preserve. However, no negotiations concerning their official identification for returning them to Ukraine have been held since 2003. Thus, the possibility of holding bilateral negotiations, passing relevant state decisions on the return of these monuments, and organizing the preparation of the approved items (special conservation) to ship them to Ukraine within the tight deadline before President Putin’s visit to Ukraine is highly unlikely.
It should be emphasized that according to the conditions of the joint Ukrainian-Russian expert commission’s work and questions pertaining to the identification and determination of which items of the artistic heritage of St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Cathedral should be returned must be fixed by bilateral protocols.






