First of all, a word about what gave a start to everything…
A city rebellion against the Soviet power occurred 90 years ago in Izhevsk, which was not the Udmurt Republic’s capital at that time and not even a city but a village with almost 150 thousands inhabitants. The rebels were supported by the neighbouring Votkinsk factory and soon the disorders have covered the whole territory of the modern Udmurt Republic. The revolt at Izhevsk and Votkinsk in 1918 became the first in Russia’s history and the major Anti-Bolshevik protest of proletariat. More than 70000 not resigned inhabitants left the cities with their families after the defeat of the revolt: some have migrated (Harbin, San Francisco) whereas others set out for Kolchak’s army and took part in the Arctic campaign. It was a mass departure of inhabitants: less than five thousand people remained in Votkinsk out of thirty-five thousands. Although, part of the workmen returned after a while but were repressed by the Soviet regime.
The revolt completed the history of the “former” Izhevsk. The generation connection with the pre-revolutionary city, its history, people, and events was broken after several tens of Izhevsk and Votkinsk inhabitants left. They carried away the culture of Izhev village - “the largest village in the world” – the city-factory, the city of armourers, its traditions, ideas, and living standards that have been forming for decades. Thereafter, even the name of inhabitants has changed from “izhevtsi” to “izhevchane”.
Official history reserved a soviet point of view on these events. The families of those whose relatives left with Kolchak preferred to keep quiet for a reason. Even though, the insurrectionists were getting together on August 7 every year until 1970 under the newly sewed St. George banner of Izhevsk division (the authentic flag is kept in Irkutsk museum of local lore). The Eternal candle was consecrated on January 28, 1973 in the United States of America at the Berkeley Russian Orthodox church of John the Baptist in the presence of the members of “San Francisco association of Izhevsk and Votkinsk inhabitants”. The legend under the candle is both in Russian and English. It states: “In memory of Izhevsk and Votkinsk inhabitants who rose against the communist regime on August 7, 1918 and August 17, 1918 and who got killed in action or tortured and killed or died in exile”.
The rebellion participants’ recollections and some photos published in the USA appeared only in the late 1980s in Izhevsk. The Udmurt National Museum was the first one who tried to present the objective view on these events opening the exposition “I pray for both” in 1997. It raised much heated debate and charges of attempts to excite the White movement. But time was passing and passion calmed down. Schoolchildren and students properly visited the exposition within the study of the civil war subject. But the regret that expositional potential did not work to its full capacity did not leave.
The events nerve-strain that were raging in Izhevsk in 1918-1919 being comprehended and experienced by contemporaries, can help in discussion, in understanding of serious problems of the present. What prevented the parties to come to an agreement then in Izhevsk Soviet? When did they cross the border after which the peaceful way out was not possible? Freedom and democracy was so long-awaited then, after all…
Once again we live in the conditions of multi-party system and the same long-waited democracy. The country is shaken with political crises and war conflicts again.
Perhaps, democracy is always fraught with instability?
The region citizens’ formation of civil position and civil society is not possible without understanding of logics, sense and contents of this rebellion. This is the problem of our project.
There was one more “secret” museum intention: to solve the problem of little relevance of museum resources and to try to find modern forms of working with the youth audience.
The project idea
The project birth became possible due to such a non-typical educational institution as the Humanitarian Lyceum in Izhevsk. Its pedagogic group at the head of the director M. Cheremnykh has been “sick” with the rebellion idea. The project supposed the working out of the desegregated educational program interpreted the rebellion experience for the Lyceum.
In the Lyceum and the museum “The civil relay-race” was declared as the subject of the 2006-2007 academic years after the news about awarding of V. Potanin Foundation’s Grant to the project. The reconstruction of historic events, the parties’ positions, the power functions, rebels’ slogans and their destinies underlay the researches, creative works and projects in the school course of literature, history, social science, etc. The reconstruction of the rebellion course provided for the museum with a new excursion route across the town and its outskirts.
All research materials and creative works of the project participants will be included into the final multimedia version of the project recorded in CD. Didactic materials (methods and technologies) for the use in other educational institutions will be published separately.
The model of all-round inclusion of regional historic material into the subject courses of general education and innovation courses became the final result of the project. The museum resources, grounds and methods became a component part of the educational process. The materials of school and museum work are actively broadcasted into the town environment.
What was the result of it?
The first “staff” meetings of the tutors group of the Lyceum and museum workers were held in the state of euphoria and giddiness because of the just won victory at the competition. Especially because the academic year passed and everything would have to begin in autumn.
The beginning of the academic year, when one needed to change curriculums and syllabus according to the project, re-count teaching-period and do new by the lesson workings, was much less optimistic. After all, the project offered teachers and museum workers to exchange the roles. Usually the school uses the museum as a resource of additional education, and here the museum had to use the creative potential of the school in the “inventing” of new museum products.
Hopes for the project seminar that was carried out on the basis of the tenth forms were not justified. Pupils’ proposals were within the scope of standard researches-reports, and there were few of them. Our senior pupils did not want to sink into the atmosphere of suffering and blood of the Civil War from today’s cares for the entrance to universities, from the kaleidoscope of discos and football matches, from the emotion of the first love. To all appearances, schoolchildren interpreted it among Kulikov Struggle or war with Napoleon.
The opening of the standing youth club-house “Political Dialogue” attached to the museum livened up the situation. Its meetings and debates on the subjects “This sweet word “Freedom”, “Constitutional Monarchy or Democracy”, “Parents determine the vital choice of their children”, etc were held violently with the following continuation at the lessons. Sometimes the representatives of modern parties and political currents, politicians of Russia and Udmurt Republic agreed to take part in discussions. The students of the historical department of Udmurt State University confessed that practice was the most interesting and non-standard for them during all years of study.
But the main thing in the project is the rebellion history, its projection onto the present destiny of the city and individual civil position, has begun to escape. The crisis moment (it is in every project), when it seems to the leader that everything fails and he wants “to hang himself but not forever, only for the time of the project realization” (according to the expression of a classic of the modern museum science), was coming.
A uniting action or event was necessary to give a new impulse to the project development. As usual, the idea of the role acting “Izhevsk public garden: on the eve…” was born in the throes. The Lyceum pupils were suggested to imagine themselves in the crowd of people walking in the town garden the day before the rebellion. They were suggested to think out their stories, suits or a piece of it and their act in the museum exposition.
At first, the offer was taken by schoolchildren easily as one more fancy-dress ball. New Year vacations have just ended. But as it turned out it was necessary to read a lot of history books of pre-revolutionary Izhevsk and often go to the museum to obtain more specific information for that “ball”.
The stroll subjects and creative groups were formed gradually: artists of the factory museum who put a play on the stage of the garden; gymnasium pupils who arranged a “decadent” party; artists of Izhevsk circus, photographers of an ancient photo-salon, fair vendors; ladies-aristocrats holding a charitable raffle in the garden and a school of dancing. “Agitators” and Izhevsk Board members holding a mass-meeting were introduced into that mixed public.
The event was arranged in the Lyceum. The lessons of history, literature, social science, arts and crafts, music and world artistic culture were devoted to it. And, at last, above 100 people filled the museum expositions area with hubbub of real strolls. Teachers were acting with their pupils to their utmost and thought out their own stories. Strangely enough but the museum stood that invasion. Although, of course, the custodians grumbled, curators drank valerian drops, took everything very much to heart and assured that the audience would ruin the museum and they would be sure not to find all the displays.
The Lyceum placard board was covered with photos in two days. But the main thing is that we felt that, at first glance, merry immersion of the Lyceum pupils into the fate of their town’s former citizens gave the energy to the project…
The designed creative work of the children livened up. The internet-project with collective composing of Izhevsk history in the fantasy style appeared in the Izhevsk Lubok web-site. The children’s magazine “Belie i Pushistie” (White and Downy) also appeared. The exploring group went in 20 degrees centigrade of frost to reconstruct the first and the last days of the rebellion.
Suddenly the eighth-formers, whom were not relied on, “woke up”. Having heard plenty of stories about the rebellion, they demanded “the reinstatement of justice and in civil rights”, came to the museum for the excursion and then were tasked at the lesson “the things’ history”: to find an object, that can be regarded as a rebellion symbol, in the museum exposition.
Not a rifle, a flag, leather jacket but …a table-cloth was chosen as such an object. Yes, that’s right. It was Izhevsk table-cloth of drawn-thread work as a symbol of the lost home where the family gathered at table at the samovar. Izhevsk Table-Cloth project was born out of this idea. Each of the children painted his image-association, and then together they transferred those pictures in the form of the hem to the big linen.
By the final action all the project participants were so much involved into the historical context and inspired with pathos that instead of the planned final conference they decided to go to Votkinsk town to the place of historic passage across the Kama river of Izhevsk and Votkinsk people who lost the battle and to place a memorable sign there as a symbol of historic reconciliation. Izhevsk rowans were planted in the reconciliation place that day.
And letters to A. Volkov, the President of Udmurt Republic, that offered to immortalize the memory of the rebellion and to move the eternal candlelight from San Francisco to Izhevsk to the renewed Saint Michael’s Cathedral that is going to be re-opened in August 2007, appeared.
Open letter
to the President of Udmurt Republic
Mr. President,
I am a descendant of those people who were in that dreadful slaughter – the Civil War. Fratricide is the most savage and impossible that can be in our Fatherland. And why was it possible in my Russia?
Rebellion of Izhev and Votkinsk citizens, their confrontation with the Soviet Power and suppression and annihilation of them is a triumph of impossibility. And being a pupil of the 11th form I want to thank my fathers. Fathers who were there in 1918 and died there or left for Harbin and the USA. And it is not important for me of what colour they were. They are all dead now. And we can’t say bad things about those who are gone. I don’t want to search for the reasons of this event but “memory burns for it happened and it would be always painful”.
Well, Mr. President, time can’t heal memory… this memory. For this memory belongs to tens of thousands of people and time can’t cope with it.
And this is good because being sons and daughters of the XXI century we must remember at least something… I lived such a happy life when I didn’t know about it but I know now and I should tell it to my children and to those people who don’t even try to understand and love Izhevsk.
I ask you to do me a little but important favour, Mr. President… The eternal candlelight from the transoceanic San Francisco. The eternal memory… Our confession… Our gratitude – it is so simple, after all…
Dmitry Lyukin,
pupil of the 11th form of Humanitarian Lyceum
Izhevsk Factory social movement appeared in the town. Though children had rather critical attitude to the viewpoints of its leader V. Kryukov (leader of the local department of Fatherland Party), nevertheless joint actions taught us to reach compromise.
The project attracted other events. I am a person who is disinclined to mysticism. But at that time exactly during the building of a road the remains of seven people related to 1918-1920 and executed by shooting were found near Malaya Veniya village not far from the Red Army headquarters. It is not important now whether they were Red or White. The town authorities reburied them with respect in Aleksandrovsk cemetery of Izhevsk (that is a region of the last fight for Izhevsk in November 1918) and placed the Orthodox cross. Our children took part in this meeting. And the things found in the tombs were passed to the museum.
At this time Beijing – Moscow train went through Udmurt Republic. The train transported the remains of General Kappel from Harbin for reburying them. Izhevsk division fought under his command, being a part of Kolchak Army. By the way, the first “psychological” attack shown in “Chapaev” film was held near Izhevsk. At night the delegation from Izhevsk came to the Balezino station and placed a wreath on the coffin from Izhevsk people. All these events described in mass media combined in our Lyceum pupils’ heads and hearts with things we did according to the project and it confirmed the sense, the meaning and the scale of our actions for them.
The contest and the conference devoted to the rebellion were held in other schools of the town. In summer Lyceum pupils’ expedition is going to search for the Izhevsk people escape routes.
The town projects “Echo” are started in Izhevsk and Votkinsk. They are called to gather and record the folk mythology of the rebellion which now lived only reflected by the grandchildren’s recollections of what their grandmother or grandfather told about “these things”.
We would like to thank individually the contest that is called “Potanin’s” for short in the museum sphere. The educational contest finalists got acquainted with Tatyana Pushkina, deputy director of Irkutsk Museum of Local Lore, the author of “There is no room for my tomb on the earth” project (creating of A.Kolchak’s cell museum in Irkutsk investigation cell) and she verified that Izhevsk division flag is kept in Irkutsk. Journalist S. Zhilin went to Irkutsk and brought the pictures of the flag from there. They were first shown to the Lyceum pupils in the museum.
What next?
The 90th anniversary of Izhevsk-Votkinsk rebellion will be in 2008. Perhaps, scientific conferences will be held, as it should be; books with new studies will be published; perhaps, the monument in the place of the first Civic War in the history will appear; perhaps, the flag of Izhevsk division will be returned for the short term exhibit in our museum… All these will be steps to the reconciliation of both Reds and Whites in our memory and so to the finish of that “only civil one”, which still lives in us and separates us on different sides of new barricades.
But we together with the children of the Humanitarian Lyceum have already experienced and felt deeply our inner “rebellion”. We do not come apart from the former Izhev people from the present ones both Reds and Whites… We have taken the civil baton from them!
P.S. The project leader would like to tender thanks to the teacher group of the Humanitarian Lyceum: M. Cheremnykh, O. Badash, N. Petrovskaya, S. Derendyaev, Z. Lebedeva, T. Mitroshina, G. Slivina, S. Pavlova and others…
When I was finishing writing the article after the project final action in Votkinsk, the phone rang. The teachers and pupils of Votkinsk Lyceum were arranging about the return visit to Izhevsk. They want to know how our program was arranged and try to live this year as we did. The relay race has taken place…
