Rendering 2

The article From (and to) Russia with love was written by David Lister in The Independent, February, 17. It reports at length that V&A Museum opened the exhibition that reveals the golden age of relations between the British monarchy and the Russian Tsars led to the exchange of the freatest gifts the world had seen.

 

Speaking of the relation's history it's necessary to point out that a process of ambassadorial gifts between the two countries when Elithabeth I sent an embasseador bearing gifts to Ivan the Terrible. It resulted in some fabulous treasures being exchanged between the two courts, and even Ivan the Terrible wanted to marry the virgin queen.

 

The article carries a lot of comment on that Ivan the Terrible may have been terrible for the Russians but he was the most friendly Tsar to the English. The two monarchs did continue their relationship in diplomacy, with Elizabeth at one point offering him sanctuary in England, though cannily insisting that he be responsible for his own expenses.

 

The author reports the beginning of the 17th centuary was a period of remarkable closenees between the two countries. Elithabeth I ordered to stage Twelfth Night for the Russian ambassador, and it's significant that Love's Labours Lost has a whole scene in which characters turn up dressed as Muscovites.

 

The article discusses that for the first time the exhibitions will be put on at London's Victoria & Albert Museum and follows a similar exhibition staged in the Kremlin at the end of last year by the Kremlin's director of museums, Elena Gagarina. As the woman said she anticipated an increasingly close cultural relationship.

 

The author says the general galleries of the V&A are now showing the silver-gilt gates from Kiev and other objects ranging from a 19th-century Mother and Child triptych to 200 20th-century posters and a collection of 19th-century photographs of people associated with the theatre in St Petersburg. The museum also Russian toys and revolutionary ceramics as well as jewellery from the Russian Royal collections. But this new exhibition of the Treasures of the Royal Courts with its story of ambassadorial gifts from the founding of the Muscovy Company in 1555 is the biggest venture yet involving unprecedented loans from the Kremlin's own museums. Comprising more than 150 objects, the exhibition will chronicle the ritual and chivalry of the royal courts with heraldry, processional armour and sumptuous textiles, paintings and miniatures. At the heart of the exhibition will be spectacular British and French silver that was given to the Russian Tsars. The important role of heraldry will be stressed with such items as The Dacre Beasts will be on display with the “Kynge's Beeste's” stone lions – the only beasts known to have survived from Henry VIII's royal palaces.

 

The article concludes by saying that closeness between two courts stopped in 1649 with the execution of Charles I, and Tsar Aleksey Mikhailovich expelled all English merchants from Russia.

 

In my opinion, the exhibition in the V&A Museum is a good chance to increase warm relations between Russia and the United Kingdom. It's hard to predict the course of events in future but may be the closeness in cultural aspect will become closeness in political one.