Lighting a fireplace, Vladimir Tsvirko takes out an antique iron from somewhere above and demonstrates a shutter with the face of a man with an abundant beard: "Leo Tolstoy!"It turns out (and this fact was recorded by the classic's contemporaries) that after Tolstoy "fell away" from the church, many manufactories, including on our lands, began to produce irons with a "portrait" of the heretic writer. A mall to roast on coals in advance. The people who gave Tsvirko the rare "iron" did not know such a story, but they left the artifact in his collection. As a sign of gratitude for other family heirlooms that came into their use after meeting the collector artist. If it hadn't been for Vladimir, perhaps these things would have been gathering dust in the attic of their house for a long time, where they hadn't looked in decades.
Two museums, in Grodno and Novogrudok, are currently arguing for the exhibition of the pre-revolutionary embroideries he collected. But his world is not limited to irons and embroidered pictures. 7 years ago, Tsvirko conceived the ambitious project "150 golden routes of my Belarus", implemented with the support of our colleagues from the newspaper "7 Days". A significant part of these routes with legends from the author is available on the Internet, it is easy to find by keywords, although the project should have been renamed a long time ago. Today, Vladimir has 250 such truly golden routes.Actively publishing them on the pages of newspapers and magazines, he is already posting new collections on his Facebook page — "infinitely magical ..." and "our ruins". "Infinitely Charming..." is a one-of-a-kind photo project about the Belarusian province. With its cozy surroundings, century-old trees and incredible people, many of whom still do not lock their houses with a key.
Ruins... Everything is clear here. We have a lot of homeless architectural monuments, but often even in an abandoned state they retain so much beauty and grandeur that it is difficult for an artist with a lens to remain indifferent. It's so difficult that now Vladimir Tsvirko has another project. More precisely, the whole thing. And even his own team of like-minded people, accompanying him not with cameras, but with axes and shovels under the motto "we need it."
Ruins are not a shame
"I'm against restoration," Vladimir declares, and immediately justifies his unexpected point of view: "not against it in principle, but what remains when there are no funds, no opportunities, and, most importantly, no intelligent specialists?" Conservation only. Are you ashamed of the ruins? Look at Europe - they are not ashamed. Of course, it's easier to dismiss it as saying that no one who is interested in our ruins will go there. After hearing such words, I don't remember how many times, I organized my team. They began to drive, to clean these " uninteresting " objects, to free them from overgrown.
After all, he's a gambling man, Vladimir Tsvirko. Once upon a time, the "150 golden routes" actually arose on a dispute. At first, he says, he "just traveled like all normal people." Not far from Belarus. And then he shared his impressions with friends, neighbors and guests of his house museum, showing fresh photos using a retro projector. The moment of truth came when, having shown several shots from the village of Gervyaty in the Ostrovetsky district, he was faced with the unanimous distrust of the public. Vladimir was accused of a hoax, suspecting that instead of Belarusian sights, he slipped photos from his foreign voyages, they say, we cannot have such architectural beauties. He was hooked on it, and so he began to collect a collection of historical monuments. Hyped, little-known and unknown to anyone.
Faith in people and memories
In general, he has a lot of collections. Vladimir Tsvirko's private museum in the village of Khodakovo (12 kilometers from the Minsk Ring Road) has rarities that can hardly be seen anywhere else. Bezmen, transformed by folk ingenuity from grenades of the First and Second World Wars. The mirror of a real village witch and fragments of the palace in Radziwillomonty that survived the fire. A functioning Soviet film projector and a whole bedside table of films on rare reels, of which there are probably no such numbers anywhere except in Tsvirko. The owner does not like the word "museum" in relation to his house, although both his own and others come here to look at the collection of unique artifacts. It is enough to call Vladimir on the phone — he will act as both a guide and a tour guide, and demonstrate the mechanism of his smallest operating mill in Belarus. He brought the mill from the Drogichinsky district, and inside there is also a photo of Konstantin Zhitkovich's family, who built it in 1936. But despite such a reverent attitude to details, everything is allowed to touch, remove from shelves and move from place to place. You can even stay the night. He won't take the money with him... Really, it's not a museum.
Part of his collection is "on display" even on the exterior walls of the house, and in the doors there are not reliable locks, but stained glass windows by Vladimir Tsvirko himself. There is no fence. The owner visits here, but he is not afraid of looters. He believes that respect for beauty and his historical memory is the best protection. They say that it lives, this respect, in every Belarusian soul, even the most hardened. About 10 years ago, when Vladimir had just started building his house-museum with floor-to-roof windows, the neighbors looked at him as an oddball. And now they think that maybe he's not so wrong. And they willingly join when Tsvirko and his team decide that they "need" to free the next ruins from the layers of debris and tenacious branches. So that even potential looters can feel the architectural grandeur that has not been completely lost and refrain from further destruction. So that local authorities can see what luxury they own and help with conservation, because often you can even strengthen the top layer with concrete. And there, you see, the owner will appear, with money for restoration and a desire to breathe new life into this place.
- Look at this: Sulu has been restored. How it happened is a long story, but now it's a real tourist center. And he is not near Minsk, not behind the ring road, but in the very outback. And they're going there.
Vladimir Tsvirko already sees his new golden routes. Without rose-colored glasses. "Of course, nothing can be insured against rudeness, stupidity, stupidity," he puts an end to our long arguments about his faith in people and memories. But he prefers to act. And to build new roads. So that someday he can travel through them with his batleyka, which he dreams of building.
Irina ZAVADSKAYA
Photo: Alexander KUSHNER