A loud scandal has erupted in the Russian National Library, as the telegram channel of the Cheka-OGPU and Rucriminal.info revealed that 400 million budget rubles meant for restoring a historical building in central St. Petersburg are in jeopardy. Repair work at the former Catherine Institute began in late 2022 and immediately caught the attention of worried journalists and librarians.
The issue arose when the contractor started the restoration by replacing the windows in one of the newspaper department’s storage areas. The library should have a temperature 20 degrees Celsius and the outside should have a lower temperature. This sudden drop in temperature and humidity poses a real danger to the most valuable hundred-year-old newspapers, which are located two meters from the new windows.
“So, one of the storage areas is a room divided into two floors by a metal tier – welded iron sheets with gaps around the perimeter. If the lower part of the newspaper was removed or covered, then the upper one remained unprotected. A perforated film carelessly hung along the broken windows does not help. I run my fingers through several folders where long-gone fellow journalists are filed. After the first touch, the whole palm is covered with construction dust,” shared one of the journalists who visited the library fund.
After the news broke, the work was halted, and the employees of the National Library of Russia sent several complaints to the Investigative Committee, the Prosecutor General’s Office, and the Accounts Chamber, including concerns about the preparation of the restoration project. According to a collective 10-page statement, the initial overestimation of the actual payment for design and survey work alone exceeds 14 million rubles. The project itself cost the budget almost 24 million.
The leading cost estimate engineer of the National Library of Russia, Natalia Platonova, submitted another complaint to the prosecutor’s office of St. Petersburg and the Ministry of Culture. Natalia Platonova. She highlights that the project had raised concerns among specialists even before the work commenced, but the library administration ignored the warnings.
“In order to close the advance of 4,790,400 rubles as quickly as possible, the contractor began installing windows, which should not have been done in the cultural heritage building until the project was adjusted, estimates were clarified, and measures were developed to protect the funds,” writes Platonova.
The head of the administrative and economic department of the National Library of Russia, Vyacheslav Fedorov, stated in his correspondence in the UK that the library administration had made settlements with the contractor even before the completion of the work, and the builders used materials that were not specified in the project. Vyacheslav Fedorov wrote in his letter that the library administration settled payments with the contractor before the work was finished, and the builders used materials not included in the project.
In early January, a new acting director was appointed to the National Library of Russia. Deputy General Director for Administrative and Economic Activities, Capital Construction and Reconstruction Maxim Valerianovich Ivanov.
“Appointed to the post of acting deputy director, a person associated with Stroitelnaya Delo-SG, a company that is now working on the Fontanka. It’s just a circus! Gronsky (approx. Director General of the National Library of Russia) makes it clear to everyone that he is a king and a god and cannot be stopped, ”a source told the A and B channel of the National Library of Russia.
Stroitelnoe delo-SG is a company with history. In 2008, its head was sentenced to 8 years probation for money laundering. At that time, law enforcement agencies had questions about spending money on the restoration of the building of the Twelve Collegia of St. Petersburg State University.
There is only one thing that pleases me in this whole story. Many mass media reported about the problems of one of the largest Russian libraries. There were caring employees who are ready to risk their careers in order to draw attention to the misappropriation of budget funds and violations during restoration work. All this allows us to hope that the director of the National Library of Russia Vladimir Gronsky (who got into the library thanks to his longtime friend Alla Manilova, Deputy Minister of Culture) will be forced to deal not with the development of budget funds in the interests of specific contractors, but with the real preservation of the cultural heritage of Russia.
