Art historian Elizaveta Likhacheva was reported to the authorities over careless remarks about kokoshniks. Yes, kokoshniks

Art historian Elizaveta Likhacheva was reported to the authorities over careless remarks about kokoshniks. Yes, kokoshniks

In June, Elizaveta Likhacheva, the former director of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, said in an interview with video blogger Pavel Kostin that kokoshniks were invented by “Art Nouveau artists,” inspired by “15th-century Italian paintings,” and that the novel War and Peace was written in French “approximately by half.” At that moment, the discussion was about the “special path” of Russian culture: Likhacheva disagrees with this concept and considers Russian culture part of world culture.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova commented in detail on the remark about the French language in War and Peace, while also calling Likhacheva “an intellectualizing false honey fungus.” And the words about kokoshniks outraged informant Vitaly Borodin, who asked the Prosecutor General’s Office to check the art historian’s statements “for possible discrediting of cultural heritage.” We explain how this story developed.

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Former Pushkin Museum director Elizaveta Likhacheva said in an interview that kokoshniks were inspired by Italian painting, and that in “War and…

On June 18, Elizaveta Likhacheva, an art historian and former director of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, gave an interview to video blogger Pavel Kostin. The conversation was mainly about education and raising children, but Likhacheva’s words about Russian culture and identity drew attention. “Why…”