[Сергей Мальцев]

Сообщение от Daniel Entin

I was asked to respond to your question about the archive because it is I who would decide such things. Certainly, we have materials that ICR does not have, and ICR has many more materials that we do not have. I have been concerned about the safety of archival materials for a long time, and I believe that one way to preserve materials and protect them is by putting them on the Internet. If something should physically happen to harm the archives, they would still exist in a non-physical form, and be available to everyone who is interested in exploring them.

We have put all the Agni Yoga books on the Internet, and we have begun to scan all of Nicholas Roerich's books, to put them on the Museum website. And right now, we are in the midst of a large project of scanning all the thousands of letters in the archive. Surely, it would be best for all of them to be put on the Internet. But this will take much time and labor. Maybe it would be possible for some people in Russia or elswhere to help with such a large project. The future will determine that. Maybe in the near future there will be a more peaceful time in the Roerich world, and cooperative work all over the world will be normal.

I must correct a misunderstanding about the notebooks. This misunderstanding has its roots in the current dispute about them. The truth is that when Louis Horch died, his daughter, Oriole, gave most of the archive in her possession -- many documents, albums, clipping books, and the notebooks of Helena Roerich -- to the Amherst College Library. She taught at Amherst College, and for her it was a normal place to put them. They were not sold, but given. In America, archives are generally open for people to visit and examine. At Amherst, anyone could go to see the Roerich archive, and could request copies of anything that was there. When I visited the Library, I was told by the librarian that three full sets of the notebooks had already been sent to people who wanted them, and that anyone could have them. There was nothing said about cost.

So it was not the Museum, but the College, that had the notebooks that have been the center of the controversy. The Museum has in its archive a few original notebooks that Helena Roerich gave to Ingeborg Fritschi in Kalimpong , and she gave them to us before her death. All the others, about forty, are still in Amherst.

If you have more questions about this, you can write to me here, or write to my own e-mail address, director@roerich.org

There will immediately be objections that much of the material in our archive should not be exposed to the public. But I am simply following the instruction given to me by Svetoslav Roerich that everything should be open and available, that the time for secrets is over. Some people refuse to believe that he gave this instruction to us, but he did, and we are obeying his wishes.

Dear Daniel, thank you very much for your answers!

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Дорогой Дэниел, спасибо Вам большое за Ваши ответы!