Moscow Guide
The Zemlyanoy Gorod
The Museum of Modern History
Address: Tverskaya ulitsa 21
Opening time: Tues, Wed & Fri 10am–6pm, Thurs & Sat 11am–7pm, Sun 10am–5pm; closed Mon & the last Fri of each month
Price: R150
On Tverskaya ulitsa stands an orangey-red mansion with gatehouses topped by hyena-like stone lions, mentioned in Pushkin's Yevgeny Onegin as the English Club. This pre-Revolutionary haunt of aristocrats and bon viveurs was transformed by the Soviets into a Museum of the Revolution, and recast yet again in 1998 as the Museum of Modern History (muzey sovremennoy istorii). As labelling in English is limited, the significance of some exhibits may be lost on visitors, but many are eye-catching enough for it not to matter.
This is especially true of the Soviet propaganda posters agitating against capitalists, counter-revolutionaries and kulaks, or extolling collectivization and Stalin, and the roomful of gifts and tributes to the "Wise Father of all the Peoples", including a huge wireless with his portrait on it. Look out for artists' impressions of the never-built Palace of Soviets that was meant to be the focal point of Moscow. Cobblestones thrown at the police in 1905, an armoured car from the street battles of 1917 and numbered grave posts from the Karaganda labour camp are among the many artefacts on permanent display – augmented by temporary exhibitions on diverse themes.
The museum concludes with a re-creation of the library of the English Club, which was founded in 1831 and "so called because hardly any Englishman belongs to it". Virtually the only place where political discussions were tolerated during the reign of Nicholas I, the club soon became a "cathedral of idleness" where Tolstoy lost 1000 rubles and Mikhail Morozov blew more than a million in one night, in the card room called "Hell". In 1913 it hosted a costume ball in honour of the tricentenary of the Romanov dynasty that was the last truly grand social event before the Revolution.
A shop off the foyer stocks Soviet posters, stamps and badges, at collectors' prices.