The Museum Space of the Kyiv Pechersk Monastery in the 1930s

Soviet Imperial Interventions and Metamorphoses

Abstract

The article deals with the exposition and exhibition activities of the All-Ukrainian Museum Town – one of the largest museum institutions in Kyiv (Ukraine) in 1920-1930, its structural units (departments/sections/funds/museums), as well as covers the museum projects of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and other institutions carried out on the territory of the Lavra Preserve during the 1930s. The article examines the design, functioning, and transformation of museum displays, and analyzes the exposition and exhibition work in the context of the changes that took place in the museum life of the Ukrainian SSR in the 1930s – extreme politicization (Sovietization) from the beginning of the decade, aggressive anti-religious campaigns, and the transformation of museums into a ‘weapon of the ideological front’, etc.