34 C O N T E X T 9 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 6 Also built just before the revolution was the Korolyovskiye Nomera Hotel. Described as in the ‘modernist’ style, it was advertised as offering electric light, bathrooms, running water, central heating, and Russian and Caucasian cuisine. Prince Michael Romanov, brother of the tsar, was exiled here in 1918, before being led out to be executed. A macabre reminder of the sinister history of the city is the PermTransit Prison, on Sibirskaya, the road to Siberia.The building housed prisoners on their way to exile or penal servitude in Siberia, and the guards escorting them. Prisoners were brought up the Kama river, then led through the streets of Perm at night. The sound of their shackles could apparently be heard a great distance away. Dostoevsky, who had taken part in the Polish uprisings of the 1860s, passed through here, among many thousands of others. The building was hugely altered in the 1950s, and in 1959 became the Puppet Theatre. Just outside Perm at Khokhlovka is an architectural and ethnographic museum, with reconstructed wooden buildings from all over the region.The oldest buildings are two 17th century churches. Also featured are a watchtower, rural cottages, a winter huntsman’s house and a complex of salt-making buildings. Outside the city is a former prison camp, Perm-36. This was converted in the 1990s to record the history of political repression and remember the victims. It was the site of NKVD (Ministry of the Interior) corrective labour camp VS-389/36, where prisoners prepared timber to be floated down the river. The camp had a particularly severe regime and housed those considered to be the most dangerous prisoners: authors and publishers of anti-communist literature, and members of civil rights groups and of religious and nationalist organisations.The last prisoners were released in 1987. Buildings preserved on the site include living quarters, punishment cells, watchtowers and fences. While in Perm I met a leading conservation architect, who works for the Perm Special Scientific Restoration Department. We toured some of his recently completed projects, including the Rotunda in Gorky Park, the Grebushin Mansion (now the Academy of Sciences Club) and the Protopopov Mansion (now the offices of a bank). I also met the head of city planning and development. I was told about the city plan, and the drive to improve housing conditions and the physical environment of the metropolitan area. Later I had a meeting the head of the city property department. We discussed the impacts of privatisation and the growth of independent commercial enterprises in the city. On a visit to the Regional Centre for Historic Monuments, I learned about the development plan for the city, which recognises very limited zones of conservation and protection of historic buildings. There are, however, less than 400 historic monuments in Perm, a city of one million people, and many of these are statues and memorials. These include the recent Afghan War memorial and the T-34 tank recalling the second world war. In Perm there appear to be no separate systems for the protection of historic The Young People’s Theatre The Khokhlovka architectural and ethnographic museum
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