Moscow Guide
The Beliy Gorod
Meyerhold Museum
Address: Bryusov pereulok
Telephone: 629 53 22
Opening time: Wed– Sun noon–7pm; closed the last Fri of each month
Price: R100
A 1920s Constructivist building that was the first Soviet apartment block for "cultural workers" now contains the Meyerhold Flat-Museum (muzey-kvartira V.E. Meyerkholda). Input #011 at the door to gain access to flat #11, where the avant-garde director Vsevolod Meyerhold lived with Zinaida Reich and two children from her previous marriage to the poet Yesenin until 1939, when Meyerhold was arrested by the NKVD (to be shot the following year) and Reich was killed during a "burglary" the very next day. Their flat was divided into lodgings for NKVD officers, which Moscow's Theatre Museum later purchased to create this exhibition. Only the bookcase and four wineglasses in the study belonged to Meyerhold – the rest is a reconstruction based on reminiscences and other sources. Set designs by Golovin and Popova show how revolutionary his productions were. Today, his work is once again celebrated in Moscow – imparting a cultural gloss to the Meyerhold Centre in the Northern Suburbs and the museum organizes films and seminars.