The Museum of Moscow has a rather successful exhibition, "Take Away the Stuffed Fox", devoted to the local-lore movement and the canon

The Museum of Moscow has a rather successful exhibition, "Take Away the Stuffed Fox", devoted to the local-lore movement and the canon. The organisers declare that the project is meant to dispel "the nostalgic aura around the museum of local lore". Suit yourselves.

Many historians look down on the local-lore enthusiasts (kraevedy), much as art historians look down on tour guides, roughly speaking. I do not share this disdain. Firstly, let us speak of the uniqueness of our local-lore tradition; secondly, it is local-lore research, one way or another, that stands at the source of a number of scientific discoveries and disciplinary currents.

There should be no opposition between the historian and the local-lore enthusiast, especially in the format of scholar versus amateur. In a country so vast, with so decrepit a material base and such a shortage of infrastructure, local-lore museums remain rare hearths of culture and historical enlightenment for many remote territories.

Local lore deserves help. It is one of the factors in the growth of people's self-awareness, not only as part of a people, something abstract, but as part of a particular place, a village, a land, a legend...