Societies for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments

Societies for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments 

in the USSR, volunteer mass organizations whose aims are to assist the state bodies for the preservation of monuments and to utilize these monuments for educating the people in a communist spirit.

Such societies have been created in the Georgian SSR (1959), the Azerbaijan SSR (1962), the Armenian SSR (1964), the Byelorussian SSR (1966), the Ukrainian SSR (1966), and the RSFSR (1966). As of 1971 they had more than 16 million members. There are local divisions in autonomous republics, krais, oblasts, raions, and cities. Some republics have combined these societies with societies for the study of local lore and for environmental protection, for example, the Lithuanian Society for the Preservation of Monuments and for the Study of Local Lore (founded 1965) and the Society for Environmental Protection and Preservation of the Monuments of the Latvian SSR (founded 1968). In the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR these societies have restoration workshops and souvenir-making enterprises.

The societies’ activities include organizing excursions through sites of revolutionary, military, and labor heroism, acting as patrons of enterprises and institutions which care for individual monuments, establishing and guiding public inspections, and organizing lectures and concerts. Their publications include the collections Druz’ia pamiatnikov kul’tury (published in Tbilisi since 1963) and Pamiatniki Otechestva (published in Moscow since 1972), the journals Pamiatniki Ukrainy (published quarterly in Kiev since 1969) and Pamiatniki istorii i kul’tury Belorus-sii (published quarterly in Minsk since 1970), and information bulletins.

A. A. MAKSIMOV