Sightseeing

THE MUSEUM OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF RUSSIA Once a mansion of Matilda Kshesinskaya, the prima-ballerina of the Mariinsky Theater and lover of Nicholas II in his pre-tsar days, this gem of "Northern Art Nouveau" style used to house the Central and Petrograd Committees of the Bolshevik Party - the military organization of Bolsheviks and the soldiers' club Pravda after the revolution of 1917 and Vladimir Lenin, Grigory Zinovyev, Lev Kamenev, Yakov Sverdlov and other Bolshevik leaders often declared their speeches from the mansion’s balcony. Later on the house was turned into the Museum of the October Revolution, and nowadays it is occupied by the only State museum of Russia's political history, displaying original objects, documents, photographs dedicated to the Russian history of the XIX-XX centuries as well as exhibiting diaries, letters, personal effects (including a sketch she made of the future tsar), and photos of the former owner of the mansion - an outstanding Russian ballerina M.Kshessinskaya. Founded in 1919 by order of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Red Army Deputies, the oldest Russian historical and political museum occupied the second floor of the Winter Palace until 1955, when it was transferred to 2 beautiful edifices on Petrograd Side - the mansion of Kshesinskaya, constructed in 1906 to the project of Alexander von Hogen, and the mansion of the millionaire and timber industrialist Baron Brant, built in 1909 to the design of Fyodor Melzer. In 1991, the museum, boasting over 500 000 exhibits, including personal belongings and documents of major Russian public figures and revolutionaries, authentic documents, from Napoleon's order with his own signature to the correspondence of Mikhail Gorbachev, collection of the unique banners of 1917 and the Civil War, hundreds of rare leaflets, documentary photographs, obtained Federal status and was given its present name. Open daily 10.00 - 17.00. Closed on Thursday Address: Kuybysheva street, 2/4 Phone: 233-70-52 Metro: Gorkovskaya

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