Museum protection at stake

There is no doubt that the economic crisis has affected not only the pockets but also the souls of Ukrainians. The need to survive can have an adverse effect on people’s moral stability. Many experts predict that the lack of money will instigate people to steal things, in particular cultural valuables. According to the Ministry for Tourism and Culture, with 2,175,000 hryvnias earmarked in the 2009 state budget for museums protection and the sum needed at 13,400,000 hryvnias, the threat becomes even more real.

Vasyl Vovkun, the Minister for Tourism and Culture, said: “Ukraine has 458 state and municipal museums, which have 1,200,000 items in their stocks. Among them are 27 national museums, including 10 that are affiliated with the Ministry for Tourism and Culture. The 2009 state budget allots 2,175,000 hryvnias for museum protection, while the real need is 13,400,000 hryvnias.

“In 2007 museum protection was given 5,200,000 hryvnias and in 2008 — 7,600,000 hryvnias. This means that 3.5 times more funds were allotted last year as compared to this year, although the security service prices are constantly increasing. In this situation we appealed to the Cabinet of Ministers with a request to finance the protection of museums and preserves from the Stabilization Fund. Last Friday we were asked to submit our proposals and make them more specific. We felt that this was a signal from the government that our requests will be met.”

Financing is the biggest headache for all museum staff. Under the 1993 regulation of the Cabinet of Ministers museums must be protected. However, Vitalii Hrytsak, head of the State Security Department at the Internal Affairs Ministry, says that 72 out of more than 450 museums in Ukraine do not have any security service at all.

“The state security service protects 35 percent of all Ukrainian museums, 223 of them are protected by departmental security services, and another 36, by privately owned enterprises,” said Hrytsak. “At present museums owe 3,500,00 hryvnias to the security services of which 1,100,000 hryvnias have to be covered from the state budget and the rest, from the local budgets.

“The state security service is not financed from the state budget; it is a self-financing institution. Thus, the main problem is that the budgets of a number of museums do not have a red cent for security. That is why we had to resort to some unpleasant measures — we warned that we would not provide security service for museums any longer because we have to pay taxes. According to our calculations, 43 million hryvnias are needed to provide a minimum security service in museums. Our proposal was to start using technical means of security as much as possible. The Ministry for Tourism and Culture is ready to support us.”

Vovkun says his ministry is three months in arrears in payments to the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the security services, and yet a request is being made not to discontinue them. However, the solution is obvious: both the security providers and the museums worker insist on improving technical security.

“We are currently working according to the 1984 instructions, which do not make it possible to preserve museum stocks. Which of Ukraine’s museums have chips or a system that reacts to an attempt to move a certain object? None,” said Nadia Kapustina, the director of the Yavornytsky Dnipropetrovsk State Historical Museum.

“We have to take care of the whole system I think. We very rarely speak about a need of a museum security system. It has to include prevention of theft and environmental destruction, as well as take into account the human factor. These are all very important factors. However, now we pay attention only to one of them. What does a museum begin with? It begins with putting together a collection. The training of good specialists is also an acute problem. There is no educational establishment in Ukraine that trains specialists of this kind. If a university has a culture program, students there get to study only museology, but they do not study history, philology, or natural science, and do not know the world of artifacts. In this situation history majors who come to work in a museum are not knowledgeable about how to manage a museum and vice versa. That is why it is important to establish the museum security and specialists training systems.”

Legislative framework for the protection of museums and cultural monuments is another important issue. Today there is an ongoing debate about whether punishments should be made severer in order to protect museums’ valuables.

“Threats are becoming more serious, therefore there is a need to step up museum security and its legal protection. With its European integration course, Ukraine took on obligations that make it impossible to introduce harsher punishments, especially for crimes; we can only liberalize our laws,” says MP Volodymyr Stretovych. He believes that the best solution is to educate young people and generate public awareness.

Many museum workers do not agree with Stretovych. They cite the example of Greece where the punishment for stealing a museum item is very severe (up to 10 years of imprisonment). Experts say that it is especially important to pay attention to the least protected and thus the most vulnerable places, such as archeological monuments. Experts say that nowhere in the world is it possible to totally protect them. “However, the solution to this problem is in a legal dimension,” believes Vovkun. His ministry has prepared a few bills that are supposed to regulate the issue of museums’ activities.

“Thank goodness that after 17 years of independence the Verkhovna Rada passed the law ‘On Museums and Museum Work’ in the first reading. We still work according to the Soviet legislative framework. We do not even have unified terminology, which would allow us to call the same kinds of objects the same in different regions. Let us hope that parliament will pass the law in the second reading and we will be able to begin to truly inventory museum items and creating a record of them.

“Another problem is the draft law ‘On Transferring Cultural Valuables across the Border of Ukraine.’ Unfortunately, it was voted down and things are starting to move slowly in this area. It is not only about transferring cultural items in and out of the country. Evidently we’ll go back to square one, but we will get down to business,” said Vovkun.