Guide into “the vast world of a forgotten culture…”: Boris Nazarovsky as an “Inventor” of the Perm Animal Style

At present, the Perm animal style is the dominant symbolic element in the design of Perm’s urban environment. It is utilised as one of the city’s and region’s leading brands. Since the 2010s, its use has been legitimised by local authorities as a significant element of territorial symbolic policy. This article examines the historical and functional aspects of how the Perm animal style acquired its current symbolic status and the role of creative individuals in this process. The article argues that, from the point of view of social constructivism, one person can be considered the true “inventor” of the Perm animal style: B. N. Nazarovsky. He not only appreciated the aesthetic and social potential of Perm antiquities but also achieved recognition of their current cultural value among the public and local authorities. Decades in advance, Nazarovsky planned and organised both the process of bringing the Perm animal style into the public sphere and its use in artistic and decorative art. Success was ensured both by his personal qualities and status in the local community, and by shifts in Soviet cultural and social policy that became apparent at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. Nazarovsky had a unique combination of skills at his disposal to ensure the success of his project. He combined unquestionable public authority, intellectual temperament and charisma with skills in party and Soviet bureaucracy. He understood how the mechanisms of power worked and how they could be used to benefit new social initiatives. The effectiveness of Nazarovsky’s personal initiative was ensured by his skilful reliance on shifts in cultural and social policy and the rhetoric that accompanied them: a return to the past, the revival of regional studies, and a focus on the aestheticisation of the Soviet person’s living environment. These shifts created favourable conditions for the construction of the foundations of local identity.