History

The State Museum of the Political History of Russia is a successor of the State Museum of Revolution which was created on October 9, 1919, after the decree of Petrograd Soviet of Workers and the Red Army Deputies. Among the initiators of the Museum foundation there were prominent figures of the Bolshevik Party and narodnik movement (populism), and representatives of intelligentsia. The first members of the museum staff were Anatoly Lunacharsky, Michael Novorussky, Maxim Gorky, Pavel Shchegolev, G. Zinovjev ,O. Oldenburg, and V. Sreznevsky. The official ceremony of opening took place on January 11, 1920, in the halls of the ground and first floors of the Winter palace.

The State Museum of Revolution was the first museum in the country which was engaged in historical and revolutionary problems. By the mid-1920s it had a unique collection of revolutionary banners, an extremely valuable gathering of leaflets of different political parties, posters, and objects of that time. The Museum had several branches: Arakcheev’s family estate in Gruzino, Trubetskoy Bastion of Peter and Paul’s Fortress, Shlisselburg Fortress, memorial museums of Vladimir Lenin (his flat at 48 Shirokaya St., his office in Smolny, “Barn” and “Hut” in Razliv). In 1937 all memorial museums were given to the branch of the Central Museum of V. I. Lenin.

The Winter palace was home for the State Museum of Revolution for 25 years. In 1955 the Museum got two buildings: Kshesinskaya and Brandt’s mansions. Kshesinskaya’s mansion built in 1904-1906 after the design of a famous architect A. von Gogen for Prima-ballerina of the Mariinsky Theatre Mathilda Kshesinskaya was a witness of many important historical events. In March-July 1917 the Central and Petersburg Committees of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party and the Bosheviks’ Military Organization were situated here. The second mansion is also one of architectural monuments of our city. It was erected in 1909 after the design of architect R. Meltzer for a timber merchant Baron Vasily Brandt. In 1955-1957 these two buildings were joined (architect N. Nadezhin), and now they make up a complex where the State Museum of Revolution had been situated till November 5, 1957, when the Museum was transformed into the State Museum of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

In 1972 the Museum began functioning under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR and became a branch of the Central Museum of Revolution of the USSR.

In the late 1970s the administration and the staff of the museum started working out a principally new Museum concept.

In 1989-1992 the staff of the Museum carried out a stage-by-stage re-exposition in all halls of the Museum without any extra financing. The Museum always stayed open for visitors, and besides, it offered expositions and exhibitions dedicated to the problems from Russian history that had never been touched upon. In accordance with the new concept in August 1991 the Ministry of Culture of the USSR decreed to reorganize and rename the Museum. Since that time it has been called the State Museum of Political History of Russia. Since 1992 the Museum has been working under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation..

Presently the State Museum of Political History of Russia is one of few museums which carry out documentation and expositional demonstration of processes taking place in political, economic, and social life of Russian society in the 19th-21st centuries.

Due to its activities and the relationships with other Russian museums, the State Museum of Political History of Russia can rightfully be considered a cultural and historical, scientific and methodological, and consulting center of federal level.