The historian Leonid Marushchak rescued more than 2 million works of art from the frontline territories, including Polovtsian stone women, works by Alla Horska, Aivazovsky, Kuindzhi, and Yablonska. Here is his story

 More than two million Ukrainian works of art — paintings, sculptures, archival documents, photographs, and various exhibits — are kept in safe hiding places. This is the merit of Leonid Marushchak, a 38-year-old historian who has been protecting museum collections in the frontline areas with his team since the first days of the Great War. Despite the constant shelling, he returns to the museums dozens of times to take out all the works of the collection. During his last trip to Bakhmut, Leonid was taking out a statue of a lion from the XIII-XIV century while a battle between the Ukrainian military and Russian subversive groups was taking place near the museum. In Beryslav, Kherson region, Leonid's team was attacked by drones - he lost his van, but soon returned in a rented car to take every piece of art from the museum. The Babel journalist Sofiia Korotunenko spoke with Leonid about the art he saved and lost, his trips, and why he keeps returning for the works despite the threat to his life.

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Leonid Marushchak first entered the archive illegally. In seventh grade, he wanted to research the biography of the artist Nathan Altman. He was not allowed to enter the Vinnytsia Regional Archives because children are not allowed there. He had to pretend to be a first-year student. A history teacher who also taught at the university helped him get a pass.

After graduating with a degree in history from Vinnytsia University, Leonid moved to Kyiv in 2008. He worked in PR, and in 2015, together with activists, he created the art initiative “DE NE DE” — with the team, he held events in Mariupol, Sloviansk, and Sievierodonetsk and talked to locals about decommunization.

In 2016, the authors of DE NE DE launched the project “Museum Open for Renovation” to improve the work of museums in eastern Ukraine. Together with museum workers, the activists updated exhibitions, created events for visitors, and prepared reference books and research papers on museum collections. In 2020, the project expanded to include 200 museums across the country.

On the eve of the full-scale invasion, activists helped the museum in Novoaidar to update the exposition of folk costumes. When the Russians seized the village, they tore off the Novoaidar district costumes from the mannequins and replaced them with Russian folk costumes that they had deliberately brought from the Hermitage.

“It was a very good project, so bright that it caught their attention,” says Leonid. “They completely changed it. And there are many such cases.”

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On February 22, 2022, Leonid met via video call with the museum staff of the Museum Open for Renovation project to prepare them for evacuation if the Russians advanced. At the same time, they complained about letters from Russian museums and private collectors offering to buy the works of famous Soviet artists, such as ceramist Natalia Maksymchenko. To be on the safe side, the museum workers agreed to pack up the works and wait for the evacuation order.

On the first day of the invasion, Leonid took his wife to the west of the country and returned to Kyiv to save his own collection of works. It was then that he remembered Alla Horskaʼs works, which were kept by her granddaughter Olena.

It turned out that Olena had gone abroad, leaving the works in various Kyiv museums and galleries and in an abandoned military factory in the Kyiv region, a place that seemed safe before the invasion. In a few days, Leonid gathered all the works of the collection — he doesnʼt say how he got to the military factory, only smilingly saying that itʼs hard to argue with him.

“We packed, labeled, moved, found places to hide and transported everything there,” Leonid recalls. ”We didnʼt have any signed acts, just the truth that got us through those millions of checkpoints. Although we could have been mistaken for looters.”

Having secured Horskaʼs works, Leonid asked whether the museum had taken the Sloviansk collection, including the works of ceramicist Maksymchenko. As it turned out, in order to get an evacuation order from the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy, many requests from the regional government and lists of everything the museum would be taking out were needed, and the bureaucracy could last for weeks.

Leonid agreed with the deputy head of the Ministry of Culture, Kateryna Chuyeva, that Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko would give the evacuation order by himself, and the museum would send the lists later. Immediately afterward, Leonid went to Sloviansk and took Maksymchenkoʼs works.

In the spring of 2022, Russian propaganda channels began to air stories about “rescued collections” that Russians wanted to buy, such as works by Mariupol medalist Yukhym Harabet. Around the same time, Leonid was contacted by the Dutch Interpol office, which found the rest of Harabetʼs works from Mariupol on the black market. Presumably, they were stolen by local looters.

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In 2022, Leonid and his team evacuated most of the museums in the frontline areas on their own: they ordered special boxes for transportation, packed the artistsʼ works in them, and took them out in parts by a van.

In March, Leonid went to a museum in southern Ukraine. Its employees assured Leonid that the entire collection was safe and that there was nothing of value in the museum. In fact, there were works by Ivan Aivazovsky, Tetiana Yablonska, and Arkhip Kuindzhi. Leonid found out about this from social media and the museumʼs website, as Russians and local looters do. When Leonid arrived at the museum under fire, he learned that he could not enter the building because the management had gone abroad.

Together with the driver, he unloaded the packing materials and peered through the windows to make sure the collection was in place. Eventually he got the museum workers to take the works to the regional museum. From there, Leonid moved everything to storage facilities approved by the Ministry of Culture.

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Usually, Leonid visits the museum dozens of times to take out the entire collection. Most of his attempts are unsuccessful because of the Russian shelling, and he is unable to get into the museum or safely take the artworks out. For example, he has visited the Bakhmut Museum of Local Lore 27 times.

Leonid visited the Bakhmut Museum for the first time in December 2022. The staff buried the keys to the museum in a porcelain box under the Christmas tree. The only one left in town was the head of the foundation, who refused to go to the museum because of Russian subversive groups, shelling, and looters, but she drew Leonid a map.

While Leonid was sawing the lock off the gate in front of the museum with a grinder, he heard a scream: “Juggers!” —people ran out of the building and hid in the yard. I had to go to the police station and return with police officers in uniform. While they were looking for the looters, Leonid finished sawing the lock, and Rita, the driver, drove into the museum.

After digging out the key with his bare hands, Leonid tried to open the door to the vault. The key wouldnʼt turn - rust and matches that the looters had stuffed into the locks prevented it. Eventually, he got to the works through the basement, which they had not locked when they fled.

They worked in a hurry, but with high quality — Leonid packed everything in boxes, the police took them outside, and the driver put them in a van. He found a gun in the basement, so he had to go to the police station to write a statement. Before they left, Leonid and Rita came under shelling, and they waited it out in the basement of the station.

In the spring of 2023, Leonid took everything out of the museum except for a massive stone statue of a lion from the XIII-XIV century. The Russians were besieging the city, so Leonid went alone that time. He was given a ride to Bakhmut by his friends in the military, and he evacuated the Lion with them — the local police, who usually accompany Leonid, had no free people or vehicles.

Before Leonidʼs arriving, the Territorial Recruitment center building not far from the museum had been shelled. Upon entering the museum, Leonid saw only smashed walls and a miraculously surviving lion statue. While they were discussing how to take it out, they heard a burst of automatic weapons fire — the Ukrainian Armed Forces started fighting with the Russian subversive group.

“We are moving in, the guys said: “Are you going to be upset?” I told them I couldnʼt sleep because of this lion,” Leonid recalls: “The subversive groups are coming in waves. Theyʼll be cut down there, and weʼll have them in about 15, maybe 30 minutes. Letʼs go back”.

After waiting, they returned to the museum. The soldiers pulled out the Lion, which weighed several hundred kilograms and loaded it into the van. The shelling started again — the second subversive group entered earlier.

There was nowhere to run back to — there was nothing left in the museum that could serve as a shelter. When they were driving out to the road, something hit the car and a blast wave threw everyone to the ground. When Leonid regained consciousness, he and the military caught up with the car, which was rolling down the slope, and they drove to the police station to document the evacuation of the statue.

“It was as dangerous as possible for the military. They were unarmed, not on a combat mission. And such cases are not uncommon,” says Leonid. “The Lion is in a safe place. I will think about him for the rest of my life.”

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Leonid transported most of his works in the van, which was presented to him in April 2022 by Ukrainian writer Katia Petrovska. Leonid speaks proudly about the car, as he has transported thousands of works in it. Leonid himself does not know how to drive and does not plan to get a license.

“I would have traveled to Crimea, the Tretyakov Gallery and the Hermitage a hundred times already [to pick up Ukrainian art]. But I worry about the people who are with me. Itʼs a kind of discipline,” he says.

Leonid lost his van in October 2023, when he was transporting the collection of the museum in Beryslav, Kherson region. He worked with his team as usual: they hid the van, this time under a tree, and packed the pieces in the museum. When they took the first boxes outside, three drones attacked Leonid, the driver, and the policeman who was with them.

In the basement, Leonid waited with everyone else until the military shot down the drones. When the shooting stopped, the policeman came out to inspect the van. The back of the can was split in half, and the shattered windshield had blown into the cabin.

The Russian air force took off, and a guided bomb could have hit the museum. We had to leave immediately. The driver was able to start the bus, and they drove it almost a hundred kilometers to Mykolaiv. A few weeks later, they returned to the museum in a rented car and took the entire collection.

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Many museum workers and government officials are preventing the evacuation. There are many reasons for this: they are afraid that the works will not return to the museum, as they did during the Second World War, they are waiting for the Russians to come, or they are keeping their own jobs —they are not taking the collection out because they are supposedly looking after it.

Leonid did not receive permission to evacuate from the management of two Kherson museums, the local history museum and the art museum, even after several visits to the buildings. The art museum was not supposed to have any works at all — the museum has been undergoing restoration since 2021. But, as the Russians discovered during the occupation of Kherson,the entire collection was stored on the basement floor.

Leonid estimates that the Russians took up to a thousand works from the two museums. Works by Ukrainian, German, and Italian artists were taken from the art museum to Crimea, and the collection of gold, precious metals, and finds from excavations in the Kherson region from the local history museum to different cities in Russia.

After the de-occupation of Kherson, Leonid insisted on preserving the remains of the works. The museum director slowed down the process for several months, refusing to give her consent. Eventually, at the end of 2022, Leonid and his museum staff packed up the works and took them to the hiding places, having received permission only from the Ministry of Culture.

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At the end of August 2024, Leonid went to Pokrovsk and removed the park sculpture “Deer” by contemporary sculptor Zhanna Kadyrova. In September, he would return to the city again to evacuate several more statues.

Leonid is motivated by anger to fight for cultural heritage and return to the frontline territories. “Anger, because you leave and realize that only your arrival can move things forward,” he explains, ”Otherwise, all the works will remain in place. They will simply be stolen or destroyed.”

The Mariupol Museum of Local Lore housed one of the richest collections of Ukrainian art of the 20th century, including works by Ukrainian Sixties artists such as Alla Horska and Ivan Lytovchenko. They were burned to the ground.

“This is the case when I want to believe that these works were stolen. Locals say they saw someone shining a flashlight in the museum at night. Employees did not come to work then, the city was under siege,” says Leonid.

The burials of the fifth millennium BC in the Mariupol cemetery also burned down. In the villages of Sartana and Velika Novosilka, the Russians destroyed the history of the Greeks in the Azov region. Many works were taken abroad by Ukrainians. Mostly these are private collections that are not accounted for and are now unlikely to return to Ukraine.

Looters also cross the Ukrainian border and subsequently sell works from museums on the European black market. Leonid is currently working with the Border Guard Service to at least get a rough idea of how many valuable works have been taken out of the country.