THE STATE OF RESEARCH, PRESERVATION, RESTORATION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF HISTORICAL ARCHITECTURAL OBJECTS OF CHERKASY AT THE END OF THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE XXІ CENTURY

The publication presents the results of a critical analysis of the current state of research, preservation, restoration, and reconstruction of historic buildings in Cherkasy. Even a superficial observation reveals two opposing processes: the attempts of certain business structures to destroy some valuable historical sites in order to use the territory of their location for the construction of more modern and commercially viable objects, which, together with the natural destruction of a number of historical sites, the unsatisfactory state of their restoration and fortification, threaten their existence, on the one hand, and active opposition to illegal business activities by Cherkasy activists, journalists, scholars, representatives of the prosecutor's office, regional and city organizations who are trying to protect and preserve the few valuable architectural objects of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and later periods that still remain in the city, on the other hand. These trends have set the task of critically and in detail analyzing the state of research, preservation, restoration and reconstruction of historic buildings in Cherkasy at the present time, i.e. at the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, identifying existing problems and outlining possible ways to improve the state of preservation of the city’s architectural heritage. The study identified certain problems of studying, preserving, restoring and reconstructing the city’s historic buildings, identified the reasons for this state of affairs, and revealed concrete positive recent trends in the understanding by the community, volunteers, individuals, law enforcement agencies, regional and city authorities, scholars and students of the need to protect architectural heritage, and found the roads of a more professional and scientific approach to the restoration and reconstruction of valuable historical objects.