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Right: Moscow State History Museum Left: Lenin Museum, now closed indefinitely

The State History Museum is another famous building left over from Tsarist days. Custom built as a museum, its rooms are museum pieces themselves that were designed to provide an appropriate setting for what after all was a royal collection. The Communists destroyed much of the decoration as was their wont but now that their day is gone, the State History Museum is being restored to its former glory.

Moscow State History Museum

Another thing that is being restored to the museum since the demise of the Communists is honesty and balance. That is not to say that those goals have been reached but clearly things are moving in the right direction. We would guess that there is a bit of a tug-of-war between old-guard Communists on the one hand, new-guard royalists on the other, and hopefully down-to-earth democrats to arbitrate between them.

Moscow State History Museum

Moscow State History Museum

We spent a long day here, and could happily have spent a second day, but our two months in Moscow somehow got filled up without us ever finding the time. Since we visited fairly late in our stay Jan found she was able to decipher most of the Russian introductions to each room with the help of her trusty Oxford colour Russian/English/Russian dictionary. She normally takes much less time than Gerry to get through a museum but on this day she was always lagging behind as she spent so much time reading!

Moscow State History Museum

The museum covers the Russia from pre-historic days through to the Communist revolution. For subsequent history you have to go to the Contemporary History Museum, another Communist creation that is undergoing its own revolution.

Pushkin Fine Arts Museum

The Pushkin Fine Arts Museum (or to give it its full title: The Museum of Fine Arts in the name of Alexander S. Pushkin) is a wonderful museum with an extensive collection that we thoroughly enjoyed. Some surprising things were the plaster copies of famous pieces that we found on the ground floor. Obviously produced in Communist days to try and compensate for the fact that individuals couldn't travel abroad, we found them generally to be of high quality and always tried to guess if things were copies before looking at the label.

Pushkin Fine Arts Museum

Above are some examples of clever copies that enliven the museum. The collection is very eclectic covering ancient and modern art, including we are told an extensive collection of impressionist paintings. Having seen more than enough impressionists to last us two lifetimes, and not having exhausted the rest of the collection before the end of our energy supplies, we failed to get to it. No other category of the collection can be described as extensive but as a whole it certainly is comprehensive. A wonderful resource for anyone studying the fine arts.

Pushkin Fine Arts Museum

Pushkin Fine Arts Museum

Pushkin Fine Arts Museum

The Polytechnic Museum was a bit of a disappointment. From the outside the building looked so huge we imagined it must hold a quite superlative collection of technology exhibits. Once inside, however, we found that only a small part of the building was devoted to the museum and that the exhibits had not had the face lift that other parts of the Moscow Museum system had benefited from. Probably that is because the museum is only a draw for domestic rather than foreign tourists. But of course there is hardly a museum that exists that cannot keep us happy for at least a couple of hours and the Polytechnic Museum was no exception.

Polytechnic Museum

There were sections on the technology of Space, Transportation, Computation, and even Clocks. There was even a quite comprehensive collection of typewriters on display starting with very early models up to modern Remington's and even IBM selectrics. Although our initial hopes were a little dashed, we left somewhat mollified. For techno-nerds like us, the museum had been worth a visit.

Polytechnic Museum

Polytechnic Museum