A new scandal erupted in the capital with the seizure of property for church needs under the law on restitution. This time, the All-Russian Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO) in the vicinity of the Krasnoselskaya metro station may lose the building. The courts of first instance have already supported the ROC. Tells about it.

We are talking about a building that was built in the mid-1930s on the site of the destroyed Holy Cross Cathedral, which in the 19th century was part of the Alekseevsky Convent. In Soviet times, the territory of the monastery was covered with asphalt, built up with new buildings and cut off by a highway.

According to the former deputy director of VNIRO, Yulia Zaitseva, the Holy Cross Cathedral, unlike many other churches, was demolished without the use of explosives - with a crane with a concrete weight. Because of this, the foundation and the remains of brickwork on the ground floor survived. “The old foundation was so strong that they decided not to touch it, like the remaining piece of the wall, when they began to erect the building of the institute on the site of the cathedral,” says Zaitseva.

Later, the building of the institute was overgrown with extensions and built on new floors. In the 90s, it acquired its present appearance: a large five-story building in which several buildings are connected by passages. Entrance strictly by passes: the object is secure. Today the building has the status of federal property.

"Built into the institute building"

In 2013, by decree of the patriarch, the Alekseevsky Convent was revived. But this happened in a very truncated form: now, on the lands that once belonged to the monastery, there are, among other things, the Auchan hypermarket, underground parking lots and residential buildings, and the Third Transport Ring passes. There is no information about the claims of the Russian Orthodox Church for these plots, but on the other hand, she confidently claimed her rights to the VNIRO building, insisting that in the 30s the church was not destroyed, but simply "built into the building of the institute." And, since it is now impossible to separate them, the entire building of the scientific institute must belong to the Church.

In November 2016, the arbitration court satisfied the claim of the Russian Orthodox Church and ruled: to evict the research institute from the building and give it to the patriarchy. VNIRO, the Federal Agency for Fisheries, to which the Research Institute is structurally subordinate, and the Federal Property Management Agency filed an appeal.

According to Novy Gazeta, at the last meeting of the Court of Appeal to consider complaints from VNIRO and the Federal Agency for Fishery at the end of January 2017, the head of the legal service of the Moscow Patriarchate, Abbess Ksenia Chernega, announced that the building of the scientific institute would be destroyed and a church would be built in its place. Now the case must be considered by the presidium of the Moscow District Arbitration Court.

The All-Russian Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography is the largest scientific center in Russia in this field. In the building of the institute, in addition to scientific libraries and a museum, there are 29 different laboratories. The building is uniquely waterproofed and adapted to maintain the required temperature regime for the needs of a particular laboratory. On the ground floor on an area of ​​300 sq. m is the pride of the institute - a unique aquarium complex with a network of specialized pools, equipped with the most sophisticated equipment for observing fish at various stages of its development. The cost of all this equipment is estimated at several billion rubles. Scientists fear that if the building is demolished, long-term scientific developments will be in jeopardy.

Recall that in Moscow, the ROC also claims to be on Bersenevskaya embankment. As calculated by RBC with reference to the data of the Federal Property Management Agency, over the past four years, the Orthodox Church has received over 270 property objects in 45 regions of the country. The Federal Property Management Agency clarified to Novaya Gazeta that in 2016 alone, 246 applications for the return of religious objects were received from religious organizations - 146 of them were satisfied.

"Information about the statement allegedly made by me at the court about the upcoming demolition of the VNIRO building is unreliable. I did not make such a statement and the protocol and transcript of the court session are confirmation of this," she added.

According to the abbess, the courtyard asks to transfer the building of the institute to the free use of the church, while maintaining it in federal ownership. "It is clear that the user cannot demolish an object owned by the state," Chernega said.

Church claims for VNIRO building

The Patriarchal Metochion of the Moscow Alekseevsky Monastery is seeking the transfer of the building of the All-Russian Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography to the church. The main argument: the Institute was built on the foundation of the Exaltation of the Cross Cathedral.

The interests of the Patriarchate in court are represented by the abbess of the monastery, the head of the legal service of the Moscow Patriarchate, Abbess Xenia (Chernega), according to a Fishnews correspondent. “The use of the building for purposes other than the purposes of its creation, or the reconstruction, redevelopment is not enshrined in the law “On the Transfer of Religious Property to Religious Organizations” as grounds for the building to lose the status of religious property, and, therefore, cannot be a basis for refusal in the gratuitous transfer of the building of a religious organization. At the same time, all the premises of the disputed building are subject to transfer, since it is impossible to separate the premises of the church from the attached and built-on areas, ”the abbess said in a statement, available to RIA Novosti.

At the same time, the abbess noted that the reason for the appeal to the court was the destruction of the tomb of the abbesses of the monastery by the institute. According to Xenia (Chernega), the remains of the abbesses of the monastery were taken out of the tomb in bags, after which a pool for breeding crabs was arranged at their resting place.

Where is this street, where is this house...

The history of the controversial building was studied by Novaya Gazeta. According to her, in the XIX century. in the area of ​​​​the current Krasnoselskaya metro station (then - Krasnoe Selo) was the Alekseevsky Convent: in 1837 it was moved here from the very center of the capital, freeing up space for the construction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The possessions of the monastery included four temples and a huge historical cemetery. After the revolution, the monastery was liquidated, the cemetery was destroyed, the temples were closed. Two of them were converted to new needs: the Church of Alexei the Man of God was given to the House of Pioneers, the monastery church of All Saints - to the district library. Two other temples - the Church of the Archangel Michael and the Holy Cross Cathedral - were simply destroyed.

The territory of the monastery was rolled up in asphalt, built up with new buildings and cut off by a highway (now it is a section of the Third Ring Road near the Rusakovskaya overpass).

“The All-Union Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography received a plot for the construction of a building in this area in the mid-30s, by decree of the Council of People's Commissars,” the publication quotes Yulia Zaitseva, former deputy director of VNIRO. - Then it was actually a wasteland on the site of the destroyed Holy Cross Cathedral. Unlike many others, this church was demolished without the use of explosives - with the help of a large crane with a concrete weight. That is why the foundation and the remains of brickwork on the first floor survived. The old foundation was so strong that it, like the surviving piece of the wall, was decided not to be touched when the building of the institute began to be erected on the site of the cathedral.

For decades, the building of the Institute was overgrown with extensions and built on new floors. In the 1990s, it acquired its present appearance: a large five-story building of complex construction, in which several buildings are connected by passages. Now it has the status of federal property.

Shouldn't a holy place be an institution?

For the first time, employees of the Research Institute learned about the interest of the church in their building in the early 2000s, when the young father Artemy, the priest of the surviving Church of All Saints (who returned to the bosom of the church back in 1991), asked permission from the then director of the Research Institute Boris Kotenev to occasionally hold services in a small assembly hall of the institute, in the wall of which fragments of the brickwork of the bell tower of the destroyed cathedral were preserved. As Novaya Gazeta writes, the director was a pious man and allowed Father Artemy and his old parishioners to freely enter the secure facility. A few years later, in 2004, the ROC made its first attempt to obtain a building, demanding that the Federal Property Management Agency donate to it a number of “non-residential premises” at 17 Verkhnyaya Krasnoselskaya Street (that is, the institute building). However, at that time the law on restitution had not yet been adopted, and the applicants from the Russian Orthodox Church were refused, saying that the VNIRO building was not a church, was not intended for religious purposes, moreover, it did not even have the status of a monument protected by the state.

Soon, restoration work began in the church of Alexei the Man of God, which is almost wall to wall adjacent to the building of the scientific institute. This church returned to the ROC in 2002, and previously had the status of municipal property and belonged to the city. In 2006, by decree of His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, the Patriarchal Compound was founded on the territory of the Church of Alexei. This is a special church status, indicating the paramount importance of the parish for the Russian Orthodox Church, its being under the personal patronage of the patriarch (and not under the jurisdiction of the local diocese). Officially, the name of the metochion sounded as follows: "Patriarchal Metochion with ascribed (i.e., meant) Church of the Exaltation of the Cross of the Lord." But then no one paid attention to this detail, Novaya Gazeta notes.

In 2013, by decree of the Patriarch, the long-destroyed Alekseevsky Convent was revived - however, in a greatly truncated form: now, on the lands that once belonged to the monastery, there is an AUCHAN hypermarket, huge underground parking lots and residential buildings, the Third Transport Ring passes. Nevertheless, the revival of the monastery also came under the personal patronage of the Patriarch.

The recreated monastery was headed by the head of the legal service of the Moscow Patriarchate, Mother Xenia (Chernega). According to NG, in 2016 the Moscow Patriarchate filed a lawsuit to reclaim the building of the Institute.

The walls are "scientific", but the foundation is church

In the lawsuit filed against VNIRO, the institute's complex is referred to exclusively as a "church building," the publication draws attention. Although outwardly the huge angular building of the research institute least of all resembles an Orthodox church. In the case there is an art history examination commissioned by the Russian Orthodox Church. “The elongated refectory has retained the vault vault, which is hemmed. The western wall of the refectory is moved away from the pylons of the bell tower. The base of the bell tower is connected by an arch to the surviving fragment of the narthex of the southern aisle of the middle of the 19th century,” Novaya Gazeta quotes the expert. As the publication notes, step by step, the art critic concludes that in the 30s. the church was not destroyed, but simply "built into the building of the institute." And, since it is now impossible to separate them, the entire building of the scientific institute must belong to the church.

The position of the Federal Property Management Agency remains unchanged. “We are fully in favor of the implementation of the law on restitution,” spokeswoman Arina Nikolayeva commented to Novaya Gazeta on the situation. – This is evidenced by the statistics. In 2016 alone, 246 applications for the return of religious objects were received from religious organizations, 146 of them, i.e. 90%, were satisfied ( This is not our fault. That's what it says in the answer. – « NG"). Nevertheless, the building of the institute does not belong to the property of a religious purpose.”

In November 2016, the Arbitration Court satisfied the claim of the church and ruled: to evict the research institute from the building and give it to the Moscow Patriarchate, Novaya Gazeta writes. VNIRO, the Federal Agency for Fisheries and the Federal Property Management Agency filed an appeal.

As NG writes, at the last meeting of the Court of Appeal to consider complaints from VNIRO and the Federal Agency for Fishery at the end of January 2017, Abbess Xenia (Chernega) said: “The building of the scientific institute will be destroyed. A new church will be built in its place.

However, according to RIA Novosti, the abbess denied reports of the intention of the Russian Orthodox Church to demolish the building of the institute. “I did not make such a statement, and the protocol and the transcript of the court session are proof of this,” the publication quotes the abbess.

According to her, the farmstead asks to transfer the building of the institute to the free use of the church, while maintaining it in federal ownership.

“It is clear that the user cannot demolish an object owned by the state,” the abbess said.

According to Novaya Gazeta, the court upheld the decision of the first instance to evict the scientific institute from the building. VNIRO still has hope for the presidium of the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District.

Another scandal erupted in Moscow around the former property of the Russian Orthodox Church. According to Novaya Gazeta, the Russian Orthodox Church demands to demolish the building of the All-Russian Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO) and build a church in its place.

The Russian Orthodox Church believes that the institute occupies a building for religious purposes. Once upon a time there was the Exaltation of the Cross Cathedral, which was destroyed. Then this place was a wasteland for a long time. In the 30s of the last century, the All-Union Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography received a site for the construction of a building in this area.

Yulia Zaitseva, former deputy director of VNIRO:

Then it was actually a wasteland on the site of the destroyed Holy Cross Cathedral. Unlike many others, this church was demolished without the use of explosives - with the help of a large crane with a concrete weight. That is why the foundation and the remains of brickwork on the first floor survived. The old foundation was so strong that it, like the remaining piece of the wall, was decided not to be touched when the building of the institute began to be erected on the site of the cathedral.

Now the institute is a large 5-storey building of complex design, in which several buildings are connected by passages.

Vlad Dokshin / Novaya Gazeta

The All-Russian Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography is the largest scientific center in Russia in this field. The entire fishery industry of our country rests on the scientific developments of VNIRO employees. It is these scientists who develop biological justifications for the volume of fish catch, study environmental risks, they are in charge of the study, protection and reproduction of all biological resources of the seas and fresh waters of Russia and the World Ocean.

In the basement floor on an area of ​​300 "squares" is the pride of the Institute: a unique aquarium complex - a network of specialized pools for fish, equipped with sophisticated equipment.

The entire building - from the basement to the 5th floor - is provided with the most complex high-tech stuffing. Its walls and floors are reliably waterproofed, adapted to maintain the strictly necessary temperature regime, depending on the needs of each specific laboratory. The cost of all this equipment is several billion rubles.

Vlad Dokshin / Novaya Gazeta

According to Novaya Gazeta, in 2004 the Russian Orthodox Church made its first attempt to get the building, demanding that the Federal Property Management Agency donate the institute building to it. Officials replied that the building was not a church and did not even have the status of a state-protected monument.

In 2016, the Moscow Patriarchate filed a lawsuit to reclaim the NII building. The claims of the ROC are based on the Law “On the Return of Religious Property to Religious Organizations”, adopted in 2010. According to him, monastic, temple and other religious complexes built for the implementation or provision of ... worship should be returned to the church.

In November 2016, the Arbitration Court satisfied the claim of the church and ruled: to evict the research institute from the building and give it to the Moscow Patriarchate.

At the last meeting of the Court of Appeal to consider complaints from VNIRO and the Federal Agency for Fishery at the end of January 2017, Abbess Xenia Chernega said: “The building of the scientific institute will be destroyed. A new church will be built in its place.

The court upheld the decision of the first instance to evict the scientific institute from the building. Now all hope is on the presidium of the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District.

Another scandal with the seizure of property for church needs. The Russian Orthodox Church believes that the All-Russian Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO) occupies a building of "religious purpose". Research Institute employees are at a loss: 80 years ago this building was built specifically for the institute. Moreover, in the event of eviction from a building equipped with expensive and highly sensitive equipment, long-term scientific developments will be in jeopardy. But the ROC is uncompromising.

The history of the controversial building is rooted (more precisely, the foundation) goes back centuries.

In the 19th century, in the area of ​​​​the current Krasnoselskaya metro station (then - Krasnoe Selo), the Alekseevsky Convent was located: in 1837 it was moved here from the very center of the capital, freeing up space for the construction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The possessions of the monastery included four temples and a huge historical cemetery. After the revolution, the monastery was liquidated, the cemetery was destroyed, the temples were closed. Two of them were converted to new needs: the Church of Alexei the Man of God was given to the House of Pioneers, the monastery church of All Saints was given to the district library. Two other temples - the Church of the Archangel Michael and the Holy Cross Cathedral - were simply destroyed.

The territory of the monastery was rolled up in asphalt, built up with new buildings and cut off by a highway (now it is a section of the Third Ring Road near the Rusakovskaya overpass).

VNIRO building (left) and Alekseevskaya Church (right). Photo: Vlad Dokshin / Novaya Gazeta

“The All-Union Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography received a plot for the construction of a building in this area in the mid-30s, by decree of the Council of People's Commissars,” says Yulia Zaitseva, former deputy director of VNIRO. - Then it was actually a wasteland on the site of the destroyed Holy Cross Cathedral. Unlike many others, this church was demolished without the use of explosives - with the help of a huge crane with a concrete weight. That is why the foundation and the remains of brickwork on the first floor survived. The old foundation was so strong that it, like the remaining piece of the wall, was decided not to be touched when the building of the institute began to be erected on the site of the cathedral.

For decades, the building of the Institute was overgrown with extensions and built on new floors. In the 90s, it acquired its present appearance: a large 5-storey building of complex construction, in which several buildings are connected by passages. The central entrance is decorated with columns and stucco on the pediment. Oak doors, a huge anchor at the entrance. Entrance strictly by passes: the object is secure.
Now the building has the status of federal property.

Temple of Science

The All-Russian Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography is the largest scientific center in Russia in this field. It has 12 affiliated research institutes across the country, from Kamchatka to Kaliningrad. More than 500 people work in its head office alone, while the building covers an area of ​​about 8,000 square meters. The entire fishery industry of our country rests on the scientific developments of VNIRO employees. It is these scientists who develop biological justifications for the volume of fish catches, study environmental risks, and are in charge of "the study, protection and reproduction of all biological resources of the seas and fresh waters of Russia and the World Ocean."

In addition to scientific libraries and a museum, 29 different laboratories “live” in the building of the institute, the discoveries and achievements of almost each of which are known all over the world.

On the ground floor on an area of ​​300 "squares" is the pride of the institute - a unique aquarium complex - a network of specialized pools for fish, equipped with sophisticated equipment. This is an experimental complex for observing fish at various stages of its development - from eggs and fry to adults. Daily observation and data analysis then forms the basis of methods for artificial reproduction of fish, including for commercial fisheries (for example, Pacific salmon in the ocean or Russian sturgeon in the Caspian).

And the whole building - from the basement to the 5th floor - is provided with the most complex high-tech stuffing. Its walls and floors are reliably waterproofed, adapted to maintain the strictly necessary temperature regime, depending on the needs of each particular laboratory. The cost of all this equipment is several billion rubles. If this living scientific organism is thrown out of its environment, it will perish.

Here is God - and here is the threshold

For the first time, employees of the Research Institute learned about the interest of the church in their building in the early 2000s, when the young father Artemy, the priest of the surviving Church of All Saints (who returned to the bosom of the church back in 1991) asked permission from the then director of the Research Institute Boris Kotenev to occasionally hold services in a small assembly hall of the institute, in the wall of which fragments of the brickwork of the bell tower of the destroyed cathedral were preserved. The director was a pious person and allowed Father Artemy and his old parishioners to freely enter the secure facility. A few years later, in 2004, the Russian Orthodox Church made its first attempt to obtain a building, demanding that the Federal Property Management Agency donate to it a number of “non-residential premises” at 17 Verkhnyaya Krasnoselskaya Street (that is, the building of the institute). However, at that time the law on restitution had not yet been adopted, and officials with a light heart refused, informing the petitioners from the Russian Orthodox Church that the VNIRO building is not a church, is not intended for religious purposes, moreover: it does not even have the status of a monument protected by the state .

On this, the maneuvers around the building of the institute seemed to have ended. But soon restoration work began in the church of Alexei the Man of God, which is almost wall to wall adjacent to the building of the scientific institute. This church returned to the ROC in 2002, and before that it had the status of municipal property and belonged to the city. In 2006, by decree of His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, the Patriarchal Compound was founded on the territory of the Church of Alexei. This is a special church status, indicating the paramount importance of the parish for the Russian Orthodox Church, its being under the personal patronage of the patriarch (and not under the jurisdiction of the local diocese). Officially, the name of the metochion sounded as follows: "Patriarchal Metochion with ascribed (i.e., meant) Church of the Exaltation of the Cross of the Lord." But then no one paid attention to this detail.

Alekseevsky Monastery. Photo: Vlad Dokshin / Novaya Gazeta

In 2013, by decree of the Patriarch, the long-destroyed Alekseevsky Convent was revived, albeit in a greatly truncated form: now, on the lands that once belonged to the monastery, there is an AUCHAN hypermarket, huge underground parking lots and residential buildings, and the Third Transport Ring passes. Nevertheless, the revival of the monastery also came under the personal patronage of the Patriarch. That is why the monastery received the title “stauropegic” to its name (the word “stauropegia” in Greek means “hoisting the cross”, this title is assigned to those monasteries that are directly subordinate to the Patriarch). The recreated monastery was headed by the head of the legal service of the Moscow Patriarchate, mother Ksenia Chernega, a person especially close to Kirill.

In the world, Ksenia Chernega graduated from the Law Academy, and, having taken the tonsure, she quickly gained a reputation as a fierce fighter for acquiring formerly secular real estate into church property. It was she who got the Government of the Russian Federation to introduce a simplified form of financial reporting for religious organizations, participated in the development of the school subject program “Fundamentals of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics”, and was also one of the authors of a number of sensational laws: “On the Protection of the Feelings of Believers”, “On the Transfer of religious organizations of religious property”. Under her personal leadership, lawsuits for the return of real estate to the church were put on stream. And in the dispute between the Russian Orthodox Church and VNIRO, mother Xenia, as the abbess of the monastery, is also a person who is vitally interested. And it is she who represents the interests of the Patriarchate in court.

In 2016, the Moscow Patriarchate filed a lawsuit to reclaim the NII building. The claims of the ROC are based on the Law “On the Return of Religious Property to Religious Organizations”, adopted in 2010. According to him, “monastic, temple and other religious complexes built for the implementation or provision of ... worship” should be returned to the Church.

The building of Alekseevskaya church. Photo: Vlad Dokshin / Novaya Gazeta

In a lawsuit filed by the Moscow Patriarchate against VNIRO, the institute's complex is referred to solely as a "church building." Although outwardly the huge angular building of the research institute least of all resembles an Orthodox church. The file contains an art criticism examination commissioned by the Russian Orthodox Church, an art critic of the private research and design restoration enterprise "Simargl" M.G. Karpova. This examination not only describes every brick in the walls of the basement and first floors of the Research Institute, which survived after the demolition of the church in the 1930s, but even something more. “The elongated refectory has retained the vault vault, which is hemmed. The western wall of the refectory is moved away from the pylons of the bell tower. The base of the bell tower is connected by an arch to the surviving fragment of the narthex of the southern aisle of the middle of the 19th century" - and so on, step by step art critic Karpova leads to the conclusion that in the 30s the church was not destroyed, but simply "built into the building of the institute." And, since it is now impossible to separate them, the entire building of the scientific institute must belong to the Church.

It is curious that no photographs are attached to the examination of the art critic Karpova: they are not in the file at all. Everything that is described in the examination concerns the basement floor (that is, in fact, the basement) of the institute, where the massive masonry really peeps through in places. But in the assembly hall and part of the vestibule, only some kind of “non-scientific” curvature of the walls reminds of the church that stood on this site. It is impossible to determine by eye where the bricks belonged to the monastery, and where they are already Soviet ones. This could be established only by architectural expertise, but it is not in the case. The file does not mention the most complex engineering work that was carried out during the construction of the research institute building - waterproofing of walls, floors and ceilings, their special alteration and filling. For the ROC, all these studies would clearly not be beneficial. And the Federal Property Management Agency, which owns the VNIRO building, somehow did not bother. At the same time, neither in VNIRO, nor in the Federal Agency for Fishery, until the last moment, no one could have imagined that the church seriously intended to take away the building of the institute. “We found out about this when we were summoned to court,” says Yulia Zaitseva, “there was no time to prepare.” The position of the Federal Property Management Agency is also unchanged. “We are fully in favor of the implementation of the law on restitution,” Arina Lazareva, head of the press service, commented to Novaya Gazeta on the situation. “Statistics also testify to this. Since the adoption of Federal Law No. 327-FZ of November 30, 2010, the Federal Property Management Agency has received more than 900 applications from religious organizations of all faiths. A large proportion of applications are appeals of the Russian Orthodox Church.
In 2016, the Federal Property Management Agency received 246 applications from religious organizations for the transfer of religious objects. Of these, 146 objects were transferred, more than 90% for the use of the Russian Orthodox Church.

In November 2016, the Arbitration Court satisfied the claim of the Church and ruled: to evict the research institute from the building and give it to the Moscow Patriarchate. VNIRO, the federal agency for fisheries, to which NII is structurally subordinate, and the Federal Property Management Agency filed an appeal.

The territory of the Alekseevsky monastery. Photo: Vlad Dokshin / Novaya Gazeta

At the last meeting of the Court of Appeal to consider complaints from VNIRO and the Federal Agency for Fishery at the end of January 2017, Abbess Xenia Chernega said: “The building of the scientific institute will be destroyed. A new church will be built in its place.

The court upheld the decision of the first instance to evict the scientific institute from the building. Now all hope is on the presidium of the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District.

own burden

Obviously, the proposed demolition of the research institute and the subsequent construction of a new temple in its place is an extremely costly business. However - and this circumstance has been repeatedly noticed by everyone who observes the fate of the returned property of the church - the ROC is more willing to invest in new glossy construction than in the salvation and restoration of historical churches. So the Alekseevsky Convent, which is now headed by Mother Xenia, is in a deplorable state. At the gates of the Church of All Saints, there is a large announcement asking parishioners to donate money to restore the cathedral, which is collapsing: “Multiple chips, delaminations, cracks ... the lack of storm sewers and waterproofing of the foundation leads to its systematic wetting and can lead to complete destruction.

The inhabitants of the monastery around the clock inhale harmful fumes from abundant fungal formations. Please do not refuse support to all those who are not indifferent.” When asked why the temple is not being restored, the church workers shrug their hands sadly: “There is no money for us. Yes, and our mother is a very busy person.

VNIRO building. Photo: Vlad Dokshin / Novaya Gazeta

P.S.

Novaya Gazeta turned to the Synodal Department for Church Relations with Society and the Media with a request to comment on the situation around the research institute building.

According to the employees of the All-Russian Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO), Abbess Chernega, Ph.D. in Law, former professor of the Department of Civil Law Disciplines of the Moscow Academy of Economics and Law, who was tonsured a monk in 2009, was misled.

On the basis of unverified data, Abbess Xenia stated that "the first floors of the building are completely rented out to small entrepreneurs." The shops and services listed by her refer to the neighboring building, which is located at ul. Upper Krasnoselskaya, 17A, and have nothing to do with the building of the Federal Property Management Agency, located at st. Upper Krasnoselskaya, 17, which is currently entirely occupied by VNIRO. The Institute, in its turn, does not rent and has never rented premises, even in the 1990s, which were difficult for Russian science.

A similar situation with the building on the street. Izhorskaya, 7. There is a large base with many warehouses, built in Soviet times as an industrial building with a single number designation. The well-known fish company "Meridian" is also located in this complex. VNIRO occupies only a part of the premises in which there are no tenants and never have been. In addition, this building is not intended for numerous VNIRO laboratories equipped with highly sensitive equipment, many of which are located in special isolated rooms.

Abbess Xenia also refers to the fact that the basement of the VNIRO building was previously the tomb of the temple. This information was not documented in the archives and the fact of its "barbaric ruin" was not documented by VNIRO. If this event really took place during the perestroika years of Russian history, when the VNIRO aquaculture complex was being created, scientists regret it. There were no facts of selling crabs at the institute either. According to the state task and in accordance with the development of Russian aquaculture, VNIRO scientists in experimental laboratories breed not only crustaceans, but also valuable fish species. This product is for scientific use only and is not intended for sale.

Personally, Ksenia Chernega herself refused to make contact with VNIRO, never met with the leadership of the institute and did not visit the building. At the same time, at the beginning of the 2000s, at the request of parishioners, joint Sunday events were indeed held in the institute building, prayers were read, and at that time none of the employees of VNIRO could imagine that after 17 years, scientists would be accused of destroying temple holy relics.

Abbess Xenia claims that “the information about the allegedly functioning numerous branches of VNIRO is also not true.” This presentation of material is incorrect. VNIRO never announced that it had 12 branches, but said that the scientific support system of the Federal Agency for Fisheries consists of the head institute (VNIRO) and 12 subordinate basin institutes. This is reflected in the orders of the Federal Agency for Fisheries No. 185 dated 03/04/2015 and No. 51 dated 01/27/2017, where the role of VNIRO was strengthened in order to improve the efficiency of managing the scientific activities of branch research institutes.

“We respect the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as the entire history of Russia. Today, the Arbitration Courts resolve the issue of property disputes between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state represented by the Federal Property Management Agency. It is sad to realize that in an attempt to get an 8,000 sq.m building in the center of Moscow, the parties are ready to go to the distortion of information. Regardless of the decisions taken in the future, the staff of the institute asks not to offend the dignity of the oldest scientific institution of fisheries science, within the walls of which scientists work, recognized not only in Russian scientific circles, but also in the international arena. Our institute has much to be proud of. The history of its foundation goes back to the end of the 19th century, or rather, to 1881, and we are not ashamed of our results in front of the citizens of Russia, ”said Kirill Kolonchin, director of VNIRO.