Museum of Russian Political History

Categories / Science. Education/Museums
MUSEUM OF RUSSIAN POLITICAL HISTORY (2-4 Kuybysheva Street) was established in 1919 as the Museum of the Revolution. The Museum of the Revolution was housed in the Winter Palace. In 1955, the mansion of Kschessinska and the adjacent mansion of V. E. Brandt (1909, architect R. F. Meltzer) were given to the museum. In 1957, the wing passage between the two buildings was designed by architect N. N. Nadezhin. In 1972-91, it was called the Museum of the Great October Socialistic Revolution. In 1991, the museum acquired the federal status and the present-day name. Today the museum is organised as a gallery of stationary exhibitions, memorial and historical interiors producing an impression of the circumstances surrounding the events of Russian political history of the 19th - 20th centuries. The exhibition, entitled Thoughts about the Duma tells about the past and the present of the Russian parliamentarism. The exhibition, entitled “Democracy or Dictatorship? (Political Parties and the Government in Russia: from Autocracy to Perestroyka)” tells about the history of the multi-party system in tsarist, Bolshevik and post-Soviet Russia. The exhibition, entitled From the Sublime to the Ridiculous demonstrates the view of the Russian history of the 20th century through the prism of propaganda art. The memorial exhibition of Lenin’s Work Study renders the atmosphere of the days spent by Lenin in the former mansion of Kschessinska in 1917. The mansion of Kschessinska housed the Central Committee and the Petrograd Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party (Bolsheviks) and the Military Organization of Bolsheviks at that time. The decor was renovated in the adjacent room which housed the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party (Bolsheviks). The museum organises general and thematic tours, provides consultations, and holds lessons for schoolchildren. The first ever Russian Children's History Museum functions at the Museum of Russian Political History. Some 30,000 people visit the museum annually. The museum has the following branches: 1) the Museum of Political Police History, and 2) Children's Centre of History Education (13 Bolotnaya Street). The Children's Centre of History Education is housed in the wooden building erected at the beginning of the 20th century, which in 1917 housed Lesnovsko-Udelninskaya District Administration. Sittings of the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party (Bolsheviks), which made a decision about the armed uprising were also held here.

References: Дубинин Л. А. Музей Великого Октября. Л., 1965; Первый историко-революционный. Л., 1989; Государственный Музей политической истории России: Путеводитель. СПб., 1995.

N. L. Korsakova. Brant Vasily Emmanuilovich
Meltzer Roman (Robert-Friedrich) Fedorovich
Nadezhin Nikolay Nikolaevich
Kuibysheva St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 2
Kuibysheva St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 4
Saint Petersburg, city, house 13
Дубинин Л. А. Музей Великого Октября. Л., 1965
Первый историко-революционный. Л., 1989
Государственный Музей политической истории России: Путеводитель. СПб., 1995 Winter Palace
Kschessinska Mansion
1957