Exhibition «It Cannot Be Seized…Keep It For Ever» (for the centenary of the collection of the State Museum of Political History of Russia).
The idea to arrange a museum which could remind of revolutionary events appeared in the period of the first Russian revolution. Representatives of different social movements – Russian populist Michael Novorussky and leader of the Military Technical Group Leonid Krasin – simultaneously made up their mind to start a collection of a future museum. In 1907 independently of one another they decided to preserve for future generations a globe made during the confinement in Shlisselburg Fortress and a bottle with a note of 500 rubles forged by revolutionists. So the first exhibits of the State Museum of Revolution appeared though the Museum itself was founded only 12 years later in Petrograd.
Among the Museum’s founders we can call the People’s Commissar for Enlightenment A. Lunacharsky, Chairman of Petrograd Soviet G. Zinovjev, bibliographer of the Academy of Sciences V. Sreznevsky, Academician S. Oldenburg (he was a member of the Central Committee of the Constitutional Democratic Party in 1917), sculptor I. Ginzburg, writer Maxim Gorky, public man N. Burenin.
At the exhibition you can find unique examples of prison creative work and personal belongings of outstanding opponents to tsarist regime, prisoners of famous Shlisselburg convict prison. Some relics let us find ourselves behind the scenes of the revolutionary movement, get to know methods of conspiracy and underground work, hiding places for keeping weapons, money and documents.
In 1920 a train called “A Special Expedition of the State Museum of Revolution” was sent to different parts of the country for collecting materials connected with the Revolution and the Civil War which had just finished. In several years the Museum created an extremely valuable collection that included leaflets of various political parties, photos and material evidences of both Russian revolutions (1905 and 1917) and the Civil War. The Museum was located in the Winter Palace, and this fact made for coming into its collection materials belonging to the Imperial family.
During 80 years of the Museum’s existence a great number of relics appeared in its gathering. All of them reflect heroic and tragic history of our country from the 19th century till the present days. Due to efforts of several generations of the Museum staff, the funds were considerably enriched. Various documents – witnesses of important historical events - and personal belongings of N. Khrushchev and A. Kosygin, A. Kollontay and E. Furtseva, R. Zorge and G. Zhukov, S. Korolev and Y. Gagarin, M. Gorbachev and A. Sobchak, G. Yavlinsky and G. Starovoitova, etc. became exhibits of our Museum. A shirt belonging to Academician and human rights activist A. Sakharov was the last item to come into our collection.
Now the collection counts about 500,000 items but only 100 of them were chosen for the jubilee exposition. It wasn’t easy to choose the rarities – there are thousands of them in the Museum’s gathering, and practically each has its own history and at the same time they are part of Russia’s history. First of all we tried to find articles with interesting legends behind them telling about objects themselves and the fact of their appearance in the Museum.
Our visitors can make a kind of a “tour” about some key moments of the national history, feel pride and delight, shame and bitterness. They can smile at naïve dreams and unrealizable ideals, see and estimate the scales of Russian people’s deeds.
Please, look attentively, listen carefully, try to feel – and the exhibits will come to life.
Comments
Post new comment