The Archangel Region possesses unique historical and cultural heritage and museum collections. It is extremely satiated with memorials of art, history, architecture and city-building. Only in 1998-1999 more than a thousand of memorials were set under a state-protection, over 600 objects of heritage were revealed anew. Some unique groups are formed with distinctive memorials of wooden architecture, fresco, folk applied art of the Russian North. There is the entire collection of manuscripts and antique books collected in the Region. The aggregate collection being contained by the museums in the Region constitutes of about 400 thousand objects.
Complex of monuments of the Solovetsky Archipelago has been included in the World Heritage UNESCO list; memorials collected in the Archangel Wooden Architecture and Folk Arts Museum, along with the Solovetsky Archipelago, have been included in the State Code of the Most Valuable Heritage of the Russian Federation Peoples. In 1999 the State Museum Society ?The Art Culture of the Russian North? was awarded with the all-Russian premium in the nomination ?Museum of the Year?.
The staff of all museums of the Region numbers 694 employees (about 1.4% museum employees of Russia, the medium employees amount holds 11th place in Russia). The amount of scientific workers and guides has reached 177 (1.2% of the scientific personnel of Russia). The portion of the university level educated specialists was 13.3% in 1999.
However, social and economic situation in the country and the region hasn?t allowed solving the full complex of the museum sphere problems. Tourism holds a peripheral position in the Region, although there is the tourism what is able to become a remedy to help development of a private initiative and to creating new job opportunities.
Transition to the market economics has demanded from the museum heads a reconstruction of their professional duties, having pushed into the foreground administrative and owner?s qualities, necessary for a museum?s survival in the new conditions. A quotation from Maya Mitkevich, a director for the State Museum Society ?The Art Culture of the Russian North? looks quite characteristic for that: ?Our staff has passed through very hard period of life. It has helped some of us to get rid of parasitical attitudes of mind, which had been available at the ones? heads. For exhibition work it?s both worthy and necessary to draw money from external sources, including from abroad. We are already able to do that?.
No doubt, museum heads represent a specific caste among the managers of culture. They were first in the crowd who had met the market conditions face to face, had studied the possibilities to survive in the complicated social environment and - along with this - to rush for satisfying different, often controversial interests of museum visitors and a complete society.
What is the measure of new tasks, rising in front of museum heads and realized by them in the market conditions? How much do peculiarities of their value orientation allow them to count on a new direction development? Are they able to realize that their readiness to changes appears as a basic source of the museums? adaptation to new conditions? These questions didn?t have complete synonymous answers, and were a reason to run a sociological research in 1998-1999.
Museum heads notions analysis about their internal motives for activity, as well as evaluation of quantities most necessary for successful transition to the market economics, give a good chance not only to discover their actual potential, but also give a prognosis for the museum directors internal development direction in future. The image of successful leader, as nothing of other research structures, allows defining the internal targets the directors are aiming for, as well as the targets they may ignore in a close future.

Lev Vostriakov is the Director of the Department on Culture and Tourism of the Archangel Regional Administration.
Email: vostriakov@dvinaland.ru
www.mbseurope.org/lev/lev_vostriakov.htm