Russian cultural heritage register

The national cultural heritage register of Russia (Russian: Единый государственный реестр объектов культурного наследия) is a registry of historically or culturally significant man-made immovable properties – landmark buildings, industrial facilities, memorial homes of notable people of the past, monuments, cemeteries and tombs, archaeological sites and cultural landscapes – man-made environments and natural habitats significantly altered by humans. The register continues a tradition established in 1947 and is governed by a 2002 law "On the objects of cultural heritage (monuments of culture and history)" (Law 73-FZ). The register is maintained by the Federal Service for Monitoring Compliance with Cultural Heritage Legislation (a branch of the federal Ministry of Culture); the publicly available online database is hosted by the Ministry of Culture. Its primary purpose is to aggregate the regional heritage registers maintained by the federal subjects of Russia, monitor the state of heritage objects and compliance with relevant laws.

The legal framework of the register, as of May 2009, remains incomplete and the register itself is not yet matched to lists of protected buildings maintained by regional and municipal authorities. It includes around 100,000 items while the local lists total in excess of 140,000. Of these 42,000 are rated as national landmarks, while the rest are of regional or local significance. The Ministry of Culture admits that many items on the registers have been destroyed.^[1]

Natural landmarks and reserves (apart from cultural landscapes), movable art, archives, museum and library collections are not part of the register and are governed by different laws and agencies.^[2] A different listing, State Code of Particularly Valuable Objects of Cultural Heritage of the Peoples of the Russian Federation,^[3] created in 1992, includes the most conspicuous man-made landmarks as well as operating institutions: museums, archives, theatres, universities and academies.