Dear participants of the conference,
I welcome you here in Moscow, at Nicholas Roerich Museum.
We are going through hard times: as you may know, a provocative war has been waging against us for almost three years by the State Museum of Orient Art in order to destroy the Non-Governmental Museum named after Nicholas Roerich and the International Centre of the Roerichs in Moscow.
If I only didn’t know that legal investigators and legal officials of the Ministry of Culture and the State Museum of Orient Art are involved in this action, I would then say that the events of March 7 were a gangster attack.
You can see the aftermath of this barbaric act: here is a frame behind me. The picture has been torn out of it. And they did the same with many other pictures. Only empty frames have remained. Now we have taken them off the wall, but you remember what was behind me, and you see what is left now. These are absolutely illegal actions, because Roerich’s paintings, owned by the Museum, have nothing common with the criminal case of Bulochnik. It is almost impossible to prove the fact that the pictures were allegedly bought with the stolen money. That is just not true.
At first we were told only about 8 paintings that were on such, I would say, “dubious” list, but they have seized 45 pictures! And the total number of pieces of art which have been taken away is more than 200 of them. Moreover, the archive of the Roerichs’ Soviet Fund has been taken away absolutely illegally. This archive has nothing common with the current events. I am sure that it was taken away with evil purposes. Actually I believe that the conference should state its position clearly. We have to express our attitude to what happened here on March 7 – 8. The staff of the Museum was practically arrested here. The investigation had no right to keep the Museum workers for 20 hours without food and water. They allowed them only to go to the toilet being accompanied by the armed people. They didn’t allow the Museum workers to call their relatives. What kind of actions were these? Who authorized them for all these actions?
I believe that the conference should make a decision. I suppose that it is necessary to sue the investigator Zaytseva. It is under her leadership all these barbaric actions took place here at our Museum.
We all have to be united in order to save both the wonderful Museum and our organization taking into consideration the fact that a war of extermination is going on here.
