The cultural heritage is part of the material and spiritual culture created by past generations

For millennia of history man was createda lot of drawings, inscriptions, buildings, statues, objects of everyday life. From the moment of gaining consciousness, a person with incredible zeal produces the traces of his existence - in order to impress the future generation or pursuing a more practical goal. All these are artifacts, maps of human culture. But not all of this is a cultural heritage.

Cultural heritage is a man-madethe past creation (material or spiritual) in which the person of the present sees cultural value and wants to preserve them for the future. The heritage itself is defined as an integral part of culture, acting both as a way of appropriating an individual cultural phenomena, and as the very basis of culture. In other words, the cultural heritage is a special part of the culture, the significance of which has been recognized by generations. Also recognized today and the zeal of contemporaries should be preserved and transferred to the future.

TM Mironov contrasts the concepts of "monument" and "objects of cultural heritage." In her opinion, the very word "monument" means some object for storing memory. While the objects of cultural heritage have been acquired by us not just for storage, but for active attitudes towards them, realizing their value for today in the course of modern interpretation.

Two approaches to society towards cultural heritage: protection and preservation

Protection of cultural heritage. The condition and the main requirement for the maintenance of the facility is its fencing against external influences. The object is elevated to the rank of immunity. Any interaction with the object is prevented, except for the necessary measures. The emotional basis of such an attitude is a feeling of longing for times past or an interest in rarities and relics of the past. An object is defined as a memory of the past, embodied in a particular subject. The more ancient the object is, the more valuable it is to the memory of the past epoch. This concept has a significant drawback. Such a carefully guarded subject of the past with the passage of time proves to be something alien in an ever-changing environment. It is not filled with new content and soon it risks becoming an empty shell and appearing on the periphery of public attention and eventually forgetting.
Preservation of cultural heritage. It arose in the second half of the twentieth century due to the increasing complexity of relations to monuments of cultural heritage. It includes a set of measures not only for protection, but also for studying, interpreting and using cultural objects.

Previously, some individual objects(structures, monuments), which were selected by specialists using "obvious criteria". The transition from exclusively protective measures to the concept of conservation made it possible to include in this process entire complexes and even territories. Criteria for the selection of objects have expanded.

A modern approach does notprotection of cultural heritage, but leads to greater expediency of this process. The results showed that the reasonable use of historical objects (buildings, territories) is more conducive to revitalization ("return to life") of monuments of cultural heritage than the orientation exclusively to protection. Attitude to the monument went beyond the simple protection of the material shell of the object of antiquity. Monuments of cultural heritage have become not just a reminder of the past. First of all, they have become significant as a value in the eyes of contemporaries. They are filled with new meanings.

Cultural heritage of UNESCO. Activities in the field of cultural heritage preservation

1972 year. Adoption of the Convention on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.

The convention itself did not give the definition of "cultural heritage", but it listed its categories:

Monuments of cultural heritage - are understood inbroad sense, here include buildings, sculptures, inscriptions, caves. A monument is a unit of cultural heritage, defined as a specific object that has artistic or scientific (historical) value. But at the same time, the isolation of monuments from one another is overcome, since their interrelation with each other and their connection with the environment is assumed. The totality of monuments forms the objective world of culture.
Ensembles, which are considered architectural complexes.
Sightseeing places: created by man or by him, but also with the significant participation of nature.

The value of this convention is as follows:

implementation of an integrated approach in assessing the relationship between cultural and natural heritage;
to the protected was added a new group of objects (landmarks);
were given guidance for the inclusion of heritage objects in economic activities and their use for the implementation of practical purposes.

1992 year. La Petit-Pierre. Revision of the Guidelines for the Implementation of the 1972 Convention. The Convention referred to the World Heritage sites created by both nature and man. But there was absolutely no procedure for their identification or selection. In the correction of this international experts formulated and included in the guide the concept of "cultural landscape", which led to the adjustment of cultural criteria. To assign the status of a cultural landscape, the territory, in addition to the world-recognized value, must still be representative of the region and illustrate its exclusivity. Thus, a new category of cultural heritage was introduced.

1999 year. Amendments to the Guidelines for the Implementation of the 1972 Convention.
The content of the amendments was a detailed definition of the concept of "cultural landscape", as well as a description of its species. To them were assigned:

Man-made landscapes.
Naturally developing landscapes.
Associative landscapes.

Criteria of cultural landscape:

universally recognized outstanding value of the territory;
Authenticity of the area;
the integrity of the landscape.

year 2001. The UNESCO Conference, during which a new concept was formulated. Intangible cultural heritage - these are the special processes in the human activity and creativity, promote a sense of continuity in different societies and cultures maintain their identity. At the same time, its types were singled out:

embodied in the material of traditional forms of life and cultural life;
forms of expression, not represented physically (the language itself, verbally transmitted legends, songs and music);
the semantic component of the material cultural heritage, which is the result of its interpretation.

2003 year. Paris. UNESCO's adoption of the Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. The need for this event was dictated by the incompleteness of the 1972 Convention, namely the lack of even mentioning spiritual values in the document as World Heritage sites.

Obstacles to the preservation of cultural heritage

Representatives of different strata of society haveopposing views on the appropriateness of preserving one or another legacy of the past. The historian sees before him a sample of Victorian architecture, in need of restoration. The entrepreneur sees a dilapidated building, which must be demolished and use the liberated piece of land to build a supermarket.
There are no generally accepted criteria for the scientific or artistic value of the object, that is, which objects should be attributed to the cultural heritage, and which are not.
With the favorable resolution of the first two questions (that is, the object was decided to be retained and the value recognized), a dilemma arises of the choice of ways to preserve the cultural heritage.

The importance of cultural heritage in the formation of historical consciousness

In the changing daily routine of modern manall the more clearly feel the need for involvement in something enduring. Identifying oneself with something that is eternal, primordial means to gain a sense of stability, certainty, and certainty.

Such purposes are the cultivation of historicalconsciousness - a special psychological education that allows the individual to join the social memory of their people and other cultures, and also to process and broadcast historical event-national information. The formation of historical consciousness is possible only in reliance on historical memory. The substrata of historical memory are museums, libraries and archives. N.F. Fedorov calls the museum a "common memory", opposed to spiritual death.

Priorities for the development of historical consciousness

Assimilation of the notion of historical time -cultural heritage in different forms enables the individual to perceive history, to feel the epoch through contact with the objects of heritage and to realize the connection of times reflected in them.
Awareness of the volatility of value orientations -acquaintance with the cultural heritage as a presentation of ethical, aesthetic values of people of the past; display of modifications, translation and display of these values at different time periods.
Acquaintance with the historical origins of ethnoses andpeoples through the demonstration of authentic samples of folk art and the introduction of elements of interactivity in the form of involvement in the residence of traditional rituals and rituals.

The use of cultural heritage in social planning

Cultural heritage are objects of the past,which can act as a factor in the development of modern society. This assumption has long been discussed, but practical implementation began only in the second half of the twentieth century. The advanced countries here were America, Spain, Australia. An example of this approach can be the Colorado-2000 project. This is a plan for the development of the eponymous state of America. The development process was based on the process of preserving the cultural heritage of Colorado. Access to participation in the program was open to all, which as a result made it possible to involve representatives of all strata of Colorado society in this process. Experts and lay people, state institutions and non-governmental organizations, corporations and small firms - their combined efforts were directed towards the implementation of the Colorado development program on the basis of disclosure of its historical uniqueness. These projects allow participants to feel themselves as bearers of the authentic culture of their native lands, to feel everyone's contribution to preserving and presenting the heritage of their land to the world.

The importance of cultural heritage in maintaining a unique diversity of cultures

In the modern world, communicative boundaries between societies are eroding, and national cultures are threatened, which are difficult to compete for attention with mass phenomena.

So there is a need to educate in peoplepride in the heritage of their people, attract them to preserve regional monuments. At the same time, respect for the identity of other peoples and countries should be formed. All this is designed to resist the globalization of world culture and the loss of the identity of popular cultures.