State Central Museum of Modern Russian History (Moscow)

 18th century construction, history museum

Tel.: +7 (495) 699-67-24

Former Museum of the Revolution, housed in an elegant 18th-century mansion built as The English Club.

Museum of Contemporary Russian History. Between 1799 and 1803 Adam Menelaws (1753—1831) built this elegant red and white late 18th century urban palace for Count Lev Razumovsky (1730—1815). In 1811 the left wing was added. Then during the rebuilding after the fire of 1812, the right wing was added for balance. In 1831 the mansion was purchased by the English Club, a social group for foreigners residing in Moscow that was established in 1772. By the time the group bought this building, its all-male members were the mostly Russian elite, aristocratic intellectuals with interests in the arts and sciences including Lev Tolstoy and Pushkin. Sometime in the 1830s or 1840s the building was again remodeled, this time by Afanasy Grigorev.

A pair of stone lions guards the gate and large front courtyard, in which used to sit a wrecked trolley bus. The unadorned pediment of the central portico and eight Doric columns sit above a ground floor arcade in an arrangement similar to the Moscow University building designed by the same architect. In several places inside, the interior decorations have been preserved including painted ceilings, stucco moldings, and marble staircases with wrought iron banisters. For years it was called the Museum of the Revolution of the U.S.S.R., but today it is known as the Museum of Contemporary Russian History and recounts Soviet history from the 1905 and 1917 revolutions through the coup in 1991.

www.sovrhistory.ru