State Literary Museum. State Museum of the History of Russian Literature named after

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Even though it was not the capital of our state either in the “Golden” or in the “Silver” age of Russian literature, Moscow has always remained the home of many greats. Writers and poets worked in rented rooms in narrow alleys, got married in ancient churches, and dedicated their lines to the streets of the Mother See. Descendants make sure that authors who have already stood the test of time are known not only by humanities scholars, but also by the youngest residents of the current capital, its guests, who may be far from the world of literature. It is very important to be familiar with the works of Pushkin, Bulgakov, Tsvetaeva, but it is no less valuable to learn a little more about their lives. Perhaps the decoration and location of the apartment, favorite walking routes, places of meetings and circles will help to better understand certain of their ideas and thoughts. There are almost three dozen writers' museums in Moscow. Among them there are real houses of masters of the Russian word, there are memorial exhibitions, there are simply dedications based on creativity. We have chosen for this review the most significant and interesting ones, although there are others, we are sure that everyone will find something to learn for themselves.

The memorial office of Valery Bryusov was created by the widow after the death of the poet, critic and writer in the house where he lived for fifteen years. He remained here, in an old mansion at number 30 on Prospekt Mira, until his very last days. A few decades later, the building was restored, and in 1999, the Bryusov House Museum in Moscow, a museum of the “Silver Age,” opened there as a branch of the State Literary Museum.

It is not for nothing that the exhibition now bears such a general name, because it is unique: these are colossal funds of manuscripts, collections and visual documents. Their basis, of course, was Bryusov’s huge library. It contains priceless, rare books by the poet’s contemporaries (with their personal autographs!), almanacs, files of magazines and newspapers from the beginning of that “Silver Age”. The diaries and drafts of Valery Bryusov himself are also presented as exhibits. The widest exhibition is decorated with examples of paintings and graphics by Korovin, Polenov, Sudeikin, Burliuk. Here you can see theatrical sketches of Malevich, Mayakovsky, plaster busts of Tsvetaeva, Yesenin, Pasternak, photographs and cartoons of those years. At the Bryusov House-Museum in Moscow, one exhibition is entirely dedicated to the work of A.S. Pushkina: Valery Yakovlechich, like many prominent writers of the Silver Age, more than once turned to Pushkin’s theme. The historical interior of the owner's office was restored based on the memories of relatives and friends.

Life in this museum is in full swing, almost as it was then, during the development of many literary circles and associations: in addition to thematic excursions, unusual lectures and vibrant musical and poetry evenings are held here.

On the day of the centenary of the birth of the great poetess in 1992, the House-Museum of Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva was opened in Borisoglebsky Lane in Moscow. The brightest representative of the Silver Age lived with her family from 1914 to 1922 in a two-story building from the mid-19th century.

Unfortunately, and despite the colossal work of the museum staff and enthusiastic researchers of the poetess’s work, there are not many personal belongings of Tsvetaeva in the collection. Just to be able to survive in the terrible, poor and cold times in post-revolutionary Russia, Marina Ivanovna sold most of her valuables and rarities. It is known that an expensive piano was exchanged for a pound of black flour, and the stove was simply heated with antique furniture, cut into chips. Thank God, Tsvetaeva’s descendants, collectors and caring people from all over the world try to replenish the exhibition from time to time. Among such gifts to the foundation are books of the 19th-20th centuries, family photographs, even personal letters, postcards with autographs and, what is especially valuable, manuscripts, lifetime collections of the poetess, postcards with her autographs. In the house-museum you can see a dressing table, an antique wall mirror, drawings and toys of children, numerous portraits of Tsvetaeva, painted by famous artists of that time - real everyday objects that surrounded the artist. One of the exhibitions is dedicated to the life of her husband, Sergei Efron, and his family.

The strong spirit, excuse the pun, of a courageous woman and her finest poetry lives in this house, as does the atmosphere of that amazing literary and cultural era of which she was a part. Moreover, the museum acts as a cultural and creative center.

The opening of the Sergei Yesenin Museum was timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the poet’s birth. In 1995, enthusiastic researchers donated the first collected collection to the city. The Yesenin Museum in Moscow acquired official status already in 1996. The poet’s father, who then worked in the butcher shop of merchant Krylov, lived in the museum building. Alexander Yesenin met young Sergei in 1911, straight from Ryazan here. Here the future great Russian poet was to live for seven years. And this house is the only official place of residence and registration in the capital.

The central “exhibit” of Yesenin’s house in Moscow was an unusually decorated memorial room. It was placed behind a glass wall as a kind of voluminous and informative museum value. The poet’s life and creative path was visualized for visitors. A special exhibition “Yesenin as part of world culture” was also created here. It is interesting that during the excursions, videos are shown, they use the rarest chronicles of the beginning of the last century.

Imagine the beginning of the 19th century and a noisy bachelor party of young Russian nobles, with sparkling punch, creaking boots and clinking glasses, with epigrams and cartoons that made you blush, with fervent laughter. Let's move our “bachelor party” to house No. 53 on Arbat. Why here? What if you put a stocky young man with curly hair at the center of the entertainment, reading his poetry? Yes, here in an old two-story mansion in 1831 there was a rented apartment for Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, and here he was incredibly happy. The very next day after the party we described, the house found its hospitable owner: in the Church of the Great Ascension, Pushkin married Natalya Nikolaevna Goncharova. Their wedding dinner and first family ball took place here on Arbat. The poet’s particular calm and happiness during this Moscow period was witnessed by his contemporaries who visited him. Their portraits now decorate the memorial museum-apartment of A.S. Pushkin

But this memorable place was not immediately open to the public. For a very long time, communal apartments were occupied at this address, as at most other Moscow ones. Only a sign on the facade, installed in 1937, reminded residents that Pushkin lived here. Only in 1986 was the house on Arbat restored to officially open the museum-apartment - the memorial department of the State Museum of A.S. Pushkin.

Over the years and events, almost no exact data has been preserved about what the decoration was like in Pushkin’s apartment in Moscow. Creative researchers decided not to “artificially” recreate the interior, but to limit themselves to some common decorative elements characteristic of the era - chandeliers and lamps in the Empire style, cornices and curtains. The poet's surviving personal belongings are here: Pushkin's desk, Goncharova's table, lifetime portraits of the spouses. On the ground floor of the museum there is an exhibition “Pushkin and Moscow” about the difficult, but at the same time very warm relationship between the “Sun of Russian Poetry” and the capital.

It doesn’t often happen that you can actually visit a cult place from your favorite book. You just need to come, for example, to house number 10 on Bolshaya Sadovaya Street. Here, in apartment 50, Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov lived for several years. Here he wrote his first stories; the image of this setting froze in his memory for many years. In the “bad apartment” No. 50, shrouded, according to the writer’s recollections, in a mystical atmosphere, the heroes of the famous novel “The Master and Margarita” live, meet and disappear.

Bulgakov's apartment museum was officially opened recently - in 2007. Before that, from the beginning of the 90s, the Foundation named after him was located in a memorable place. Bulgakov. The museum's collection consists of Mikhail Afanasyevich's personal furniture, household items, books, manuscripts, photographs, paintings and records, preserved and donated by the writer's relatives and friends. The exhibition is presented very interestingly. Eight halls introduce us to the era of the 20s–40s, the personality of the author and his literary heroes. Not only is Bulgakov’s room recreated here, but there is also a “Communal Kitchen”, the “Editorial office of the newspaper “Gudok”, where the writer worked, is presented, “The Blue Office” conveys the atmosphere of the writer’s last home in Nashchokinsky Lane.

In the “Bad Apartment” you can listen to a guide who will tell you in detail about the house, its inhabitants and, of course, the great writer of the 20th century. The museum premises are also used as the stage of the Komediant Theater; concerts and poetry evenings, forums on Bulgakov’s creative heritage and photo exhibitions are held here. The museum-apartment is located on the 4th floor. Do not confuse the memorial with the private cultural center “Bulgakov House” on the first one.

Much earlier than others in Moscow - in 1954 - the house-museum of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was opened. Now it is a branch of the State Literary Museum. On Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya Street, in a two-story stone outbuilding built in 1874, Chekhov lived for almost four years. That period became a time of incredible inspiration and creative growth. In the house on Sadovaya he wrote almost a hundred stories and plays.

Based on the memoirs and sketches of contemporaries, the museum has almost thoroughly restored the environment in which the writer worked. Today you can see how he lived: his office, bedroom, sister and brother’s rooms. There are books by the playwright translated into different languages ​​of the world, the walls are decorated with photographs and graphics with views of Chekhov’s beloved Moscow at the end of the century before last. Many of Anton Pavlovich’s personal belongings have a whole history. For example, on the desk of a doctor-writer there is a bronze inkwell with the figure of a horse. It was given to him by a poor patient, with whom Chekhov not only did not demand money for consultations, but also gave money for further treatment. A photograph of his favorite composer Tchaikovsky, with a personal autograph, was very dear to his heart.

Chekhov's family donated manuscripts and documents to the state, which formed the basis of the exhibition housed in three halls of the museum. One of the rooms is entirely dedicated to the writer’s trip to Sakhalin. And the main hall of the Chekhov House-Museum in Moscow is not only an exhibition hall, but also a concert hall. The Chekhov Theater troupe plays here. You can look at the rarest posters for performances of that time, postcards with outstanding actors playing in plays based on Chekhov's works, programs, photographs of Chekhov in the acting environment, reviews of his contemporaries on his drama.

An architectural monument of Russian classicism, created by I.D. Gilardi, based on the drawings of D. Quarenghi, - the building of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor - a place of pilgrimage not only for connoisseurs of the art of construction. The wing of the hospital was used, among other things, for the resettlement of its workers. The two-room apartment on the ground floor was occupied by the family of the doctor Dostoevsky. His son Fedor, born in the wing opposite, lived with his father and mother from 1823 to 1837. At the age of less than 16, he left Moscow for the then capital - St. Petersburg.

What is surprising is that the apartment where the great artist of words absorbed images and impressions from childhood was never rebuilt. The museum on Bozhedomka was opened back in 1928. Today, the street on which this house No. 2 stands is named after the author of The Brothers Karamazov. The collection is based on the most valuable items and documents carefully preserved by Dostoevsky’s wife, Anna Grigorievna. The interior of the rooms was restored according to the memoirs of the writer’s brother. The exhibition includes family furniture, decorative items, such as bronze candelabra, lifetime portraits of F.M.’s parents and relatives. Dostoevsky and even little Fedya’s very first book - “One Hundred and Four Selected Stories of the Old and New Testaments.”

Already outside the walls of the memorial apartment, but in the building of the former hospital, which became the Dostoevsky Museum in Moscow, the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature at Moscow State University and professional historians assembled the exhibition “The World of Dostoevsky,” introducing visitors to how Fyodor Mikhailovich lived and worked. There is also a lecture hall here.

The memorial setting of Korney Chukovsky's dacha has been almost completely left in the form it had during his lifetime. A two-story house on Serafimovich Street in Peredelkino keeps the secrets of creating many works for adults and children, because Korney Ivanovich lived here for almost thirty years. The museum collection includes household items of the writer, translator and literary critic, a large library of books and documents, including autographs of Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Gagarin and Raikin, a collection of toys - gifts from children admired by his fairy tales. The house-museum was opened in 1996 in the writers' village.

The museum in Peredelkino is artistically filled with interesting exhibits and illustrations of the storyteller’s work: here is a miracle tree with shoes, and here is an old black telephone, which was probably used by an elephant. After looking in the mirror of the magic box, you need to make a wish. Here you can also see the cartoon “Telephone”, voiced by Korney Ivanovich himself.

In Zamoskvorechye, that rare area of ​​our metropolis, where to this day, by some miracle, the original appearance and charm of ancient streets has been preserved, the A.N. Museum was opened in 1984. Ostrovsky. It was here that the great Russian playwright was born. This is not even a house, but rather a two-story wooden manor of the early 19th century, around which a marvelous garden blooms from the first days of spring until almost mid-autumn.

The home environment that existed during the writer’s lifetime has been restored almost completely. There is a pleasant atmosphere of measured life. On the ground floor of the house Ostrovsky's belongings are collected: pieces of furniture (including his father's rare collection), books, family portraits. In addition, many items in the museum collection allow the visitor to learn the history of Moscow at that time, the customs and tastes of its inhabitants, and through this, perhaps, better understand the work of Alexander Ostrovsky. On the second floor, unique items related to stage productions of the playwright's works are exhibited. These are manuscripts, old posters, photographs of actors, sketches of scenery. As many as two halls are reserved specifically for the iconic plays “Dowry” and “The Thunderstorm”.

The Museum of the writer Leo Tolstoy in Moscow is located on Prechistenka. Under him, the Museum Academy for preschool children “Ant Brothers” regularly conducts developmental classes, as well as theatrical clubs for school students of different ages. It has its own lecture hall and cinema hall, library, second-hand bookstore, connected, of course, with the life and work of Lev Nikolaevich. Also, in order to unite literary scholars and writers, and professionals from other museums, art connoisseurs, the literary club “Lewin” was created at the museum.

Today, the main thematic excursions of the museum are “Father's House. The Youth of a Genius,” “Legends and Creation of the Tolstoy Family,” “Pages of Life,” “Earth and Heaven,” “War and Peace.”

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In 1934, the Central Museum of Fiction, Criticism and Journalism and the Literary Museum at the Lenin Library merged into the State Literary Museum. Now it contains personal archives donated to the state by many figures of Russian culture from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Rare ancient engravings with views of the capitals of the Russian Federation and the Russian Empire, miniatures and picturesque portraits of statesmen who left their mark on history are also displayed here.

A huge part of the state exhibition is the first printed and handwritten church books, the first secular publications of Peter the Great’s times, rare copies with autographs, manuscripts written by people who have forever entered the history of Russia: Derzhavin G., Fonvizin D., Karamzin N., Radishchev A., Griboedov A., Lermontov Yu. and other no less worthy representatives of literature. In total, the exhibition contains more than a million valuable specimens of this kind.

Today, the state collection of the literary museum includes eleven branches located in different places and known even in distant countries. These are house-museums and apartment-museums of people who left a bright mark on the history of Russia of all times:

• Fyodor Dostoevsky (Moscow, Dostoevsky St., 2);
• Ilya Ostroukhov (Moscow, Trubnikovsky Lane, 17);
• Anton Chekhov (Moscow, Sadovaya Kudrinskaya St., 6);
• Anatoly Lunacharsky (Moscow, Denezhny lane 9/5, apt. 1, closed for reconstruction);
• Alexandra Herzen (Moscow, Sivtsev Vrazhek lane, 27);
• Mikhail Lermontov (Moscow, Malaya Molchanovka St., 2);
• Alexey Tolstoy (Moscow, Spiridonovka str., 2/6);
• Mikhail Prishvin (Moscow region, Odintsovo district, Dunino village, 2);
• Boris Pasternak (Moscow, Vnukovskoye settlement, Peredelkino village, Pavlenko street, 3);
• Korney Chukovsky (Moscow, Vnukovskoye village, DSK Michurinets village, Serafimovicha str., 3);
• Museum of the Silver Age (Moscow, Prospekt Mira, 30).

The Museum of the Silver Age, opened in 1999, also belongs to the same museum complex. Each literary exhibition is so complete and deep in its content that in itself it can serve as the basis for opening another full-fledged and sought-after museum. More recently, at the end of 2014, an ancient two-story mansion of the 19th century, which belonged to the famous Russian philanthropist Savva Morozov, was restored and transferred to this institution. In the same year, the reconstruction of the memorial building-mansion in Kislovodsk, where Solzhenitsyn visited, was completed - this is also one of the branches, which is intended to be used not only as a museum site, but also as a cultural center, where meetings with writers will constantly take place.

State Literary Museum

The State Literary Museum is one of the world's richest repositories of manuscripts, literary materials, drawings and sketches for literary works. The museum is the world's leading scientific center, which conducts research on domestic and foreign literary works, as well as the main methodological center of this profile in Russia.

Over the years of the institution's existence, the museum's funds have accumulated many exhibits - literary archives of writers, Russian cultural figures of different eras, engravings with views of old Moscow, pictorial portraits of government, scientific and cultural figures, handwritten and printed spiritual publications, civil press of the era of Tsar Peter, lifetime publications with autographs of authors, materials related to the history of Russian classical and modern literature. In total, the museum's archives contain over 700,000 exhibits.

History of the Moscow Literary Museum

The year of foundation of the museum is considered to be 1934. Then it was decided to create a single Literary Museum on the basis of the Central Museum of Literature, Criticism and Journalism and the museum at the library named after. Lenin. But the beginning of the museum’s history took place three years earlier, when the famous revolutionary and cultural figure V.D. Bonch-Bruevich created a commission to prepare for the creation of the Central Literary Museum and began selecting a collection of exhibits for it.

A building was allocated for the new museum, which was located next to the library named after. Lenin. Even then, the Literary Museum was the largest in the world and contained 3 million archival documents. Later, most of the documents stored in the museum were transferred to the Central Archives. Bonch-Bruevich continued to actively supervise the work of the museum and fill its manuscript collections. In 1951, many documents from the KGB archives were transferred to the museum. These were book manuscripts and literary materials taken from repressed writers. They were not put on display and were considered as additional funds of the museum.

The museum grew and developed; already in 1970 it occupied 17 buildings located throughout Moscow. In 1995, their number increased to 20.

The main exhibition of the museum concerns the history of Russian literature of the 18th-19th centuries. It is located in the former palace of the Naryshkin princes, located on the territory of the Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery. The exposition of the period of Soviet literature is located in the building of the Ostroukhov Gallery.

Departments of the Literary Museum

The museum has several departments that present independent exhibitions relating to the life and work of outstanding Russian and Soviet writers, and also reflect the main periods of development of Russian literature. The structural parts of the museum are the house-museums of Lermontov, Herzen, Pasternak, Chekhov, Chukovsky, Prishvin; museum-apartments of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Lunacharsky. The Silver Age Museum is also of interest.

All departments of the museum are engaged in educational activities. Many interactive excursions have been developed here for visitors of different ages. Many educational excursions are especially designed for children. They are invited to try writing with quills, touch papyrus and lamb skin, which were previously used as paper, and hit the buttons of the typewriter on which K.I. wrote his poems and fairy tales. Chukovsky. High school students are invited to literary salons of the 19th century, where they plunge into the atmosphere of the salon in a playful way, solve puzzles, riddles, anagrams, make up charades, and try themselves in the art of rhyming and epigrams.

Personal archives of the Literary Museum

Dostoevsky Archive;
- Chekhov's archive;
- Fet archive;
- Garshin archive;
- Leskov’s archive;
- Belinsky archive.

The State Literary Museum is the world's largest collection of materials relating to the literary activities of Russian and foreign writers.

A copy of the 1870 icon depicting Saints Cosmas and Damian. Pushkin and Dahl served as prototypes of the saints. The original icon is kept in the Museum of the History of Religions.

Subsequently, V.I. Dal and A.S. Pushkin met several times; they talked about Russian literature, folk art, the Russian language, and discussed Dal’s linguistic discoveries. V.I. Dal writes in his memoirs that it was Pushkin who insisted on the obligatory and speedy completion of the dictionary.

Dahl spent the last night before Pushkin's death at his bedside; later he would write an essay about his death. The dying poet gave Dahl his gold ring with an emerald as a souvenir. Dahl refused, but Pushkin insisted. A year later, from Orenburg, Dahl wrote to Prince Odoevsky:

“Now Pushkin’s ring is a real talisman for me. As soon as I look at him, a spark runs through me and I want to get down to something decent.”

Fortunately, the ring, a gift from Pushkin to Dahl, has survived to this day. After the death of V.I. Dahl, the ring was with his middle daughter Olga Vladimirovna Demidova. Olga married Platon Demidov, and the Dahl family became related to the famous family of Russian mining owners, the Demidovs. Olga donated the ring to the famous Pushkin exhibition of 1880. And after the exhibition, she presented the ring to Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who, in turn, by will, donated it to the Pushkin House - the Institute of Russian Literature in St. Petersburg. In the 1950s, when the Pushkin apartment museum on the Moika was created, the ring was transferred to this museum and his adventures ended there. Unfortunately, the ring is in the museum's storerooms and can only be seen at exhibitions.

V. I. Dahl's Dictionary as a treasury of the Russian language

There was an expression in pre-revolutionary Russia: “The room of a Russian cultured person is a table, a chair and a distance.” Dahl's dictionary is an exceptional phenomenon. Dahl compiled his dictionary alone, without assistants, and fifty-three years of his life were devoted to this work. Dahl wrote down his first word for the dictionary at the age of 17, when he was heading to his duty station as a young midshipman, and he wrote down the last four new words he heard from the servants when he was already bedridden, a week before his death. In the middle of the 19th century, during the heyday of Russian classical literature, he, like Pushkin, called on his contemporaries to turn to living Russian speech. Dahl criticized previously published academic dictionaries, which were based on bookish and written speech. “The time has come,” wrote V.I. Dal in his “Addressing Word” to his dictionary, “to appreciate the people’s language.” Official academicians of that time, in response to criticism, ignored Dahl's work in every possible way and refused to cooperate with him. But Dahl's dictionary saw the light of day. The publication of the dictionary was a unique cultural event of that time. In terms of the number of words included in it (more than 200 thousand), this dictionary remains unsurpassed to this day. The dictionary contains countless synonyms, epithets, and figurative expressions of the Russian language. The dictionary is still a reference book for ethnographers and linguists; writers and translators constantly turn to it. In fact, Dahl’s dictionary became an encyclopedia of Russian folk life in the mid-19th century; using the dictionary you can study the language, life and customs of our ancestors.

There were four editions of Dahl's dictionary in total. The last edition was published in 1998 and it was a repetition of the third pre-revolutionary edition; no changes were made to it.

Not all contemporaries shared the views of V. I. Dahl. Promoting folk speech, Dahl somewhat belittled the importance of standardized literary language. There is a well-known episode of his verbal polemic with the poet V. A. Zhukovsky. They were discussing two forms of expressing the same thought. The general literary form at that time looked like this: “The Cossack saddled his horse as quickly as possible, took his comrade, who did not have a riding horse, onto his croup and followed the enemy, always having him in sight, so that under favorable circumstances he could be attacked.” . And Dahl proposed this version of this phrase: “The Cossack saddled the duck, put his endless comrade on his hips and watched the enemy in the narrow view, so that if he could hit him,” and considered this option more expressive. Zhukovsky did not agree with him and said that the idea was expressed in the local dialect and was generally incomprehensible to Russian people.

Another extreme was the position of V. I. Dal regarding foreign words in the Russian language, which he considered a “dry clothespin” on the living body of the Russian language. Including foreign words in his dictionary, Dahl looked for, and sometimes even invented, suitable Russian replacements for them. Instead of the word instinct, he suggested using the word wake-up; instead of the word horizon, a whole series of Russian synonyms was recommended: horizon, sky, skyscraper, veil, close, mischief. Dahl's French word pince-nez turned into a funny Russian word - nose grip. Instead of the word egoist, he suggested using the words samotnik or samotnik. The substitutions are interesting, witty, but not natural. Of course, pseudo-Russian words have not taken root in our language.

The State Museum of the History of Russian Literature named after V.I. Dahl (State Literary Museum) has a rich and complex history. According to the author of the concept of the country's central literary museum, Vladimir Dmitrievich Bonch-Bruevich (1873–1955), the idea of ​​the museum was formed back in 1903, when he was in exile in Geneva.

The history of the present GMIRLI named after V.I. Dahl goes back to the creation of two museums dedicated to the heritage of the great Russian classics. The Moscow State Museum named after A.P. Chekhov was founded in October 1921, its collections are now in the funds of the State Historical Museum named after V.I. Dahl, which dates back to this date and is preparing to celebrate its centenary in October 2021.

The initiative to create a museum of another Russian classic, F. M. Dostoevsky, was also put forward in 1921, on the eve of the writer’s centenary. The Dostoevsky Museum was founded in 1928, and in 1940 it became part of the country's main literary museum.

Of particular importance in the history of the V. I. Dahl State Historical Museum of Literature is the creation in 1933, on the initiative of V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, of the Central Museum of Fiction, Criticism and Journalism. Its stock collections included museum objects acquired, inter alia, as a result of the work of the State Commission established in 1931 to identify monuments of literature and art of the peoples of the USSR located abroad. To ensure the work of the commission, significant financial resources were allocated, including from gold and foreign exchange reserves. If we consider how difficult the period was for the USSR at the turn of the 1920s–1930s, it becomes obvious that the creation and development of the main literary museum of a literary-centric country was the most important state task.

On July 16, 1934, by order of the People's Commissar of Education, the Central Museum of Fiction, Criticism and Journalism was abolished; instead, the State Literary Museum was created, which, according to this order, no longer had legal autonomy and was incorporated into the State Library of the USSR named after V.I. Lenin. A difficult period began in the work of the country's main literary museum, which soon managed to regain its status as an independent cultural institution.

By the end of the 1930s, the museum's collection numbered hundreds of thousands of relics - manuscripts, books, documents, photographs, paintings, graphics, decorative and applied arts, and memorial items. It was then that many valuable collections appeared in the museum, a highly professional team was formed, and intensive scientific and publishing activities began.

In 1941, by decision of the government, most of the manuscripts from the museum’s collection were confiscated and transferred to the jurisdiction of the Main Archival Directorate, subordinate to the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Despite this, thanks to intensive collecting work, the museum over time again became one of the largest repositories of materials on the history of Russian literature.

On July 26, 1963, according to the order of the USSR Ministry of Culture, the museum officially received the status of “the leading museum, which is entrusted with coordinating the research and exhibition work of single-profile museums in the country and providing them with advisory and methodological assistance.” Over the next decades, with the direct participation of employees of the country's flagship literary museum, dozens of museums were created in different regions of the USSR, including large and now widely known ones, and many permanent exhibitions of leading literary museums were updated. In 1984, the museum was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples.

In 2015, at the suggestion of the museum, the Initiative Group of Leading Literary Museums of Russia was formed, and then the Association of Literary Museums, which since 2018 has been operating as a section of the Union of Museums of the Russian Federation.

In April 2017, the country's flagship literary museum received a new official name: the State Museum of the History of Russian Literature named after V. I. Dal. This name fully corresponds not only to the modern mission of the largest literary museum in the country, but also to the plans of the creator of the scientific concept of the museum, V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, who believed that the cornerstone condition for the existence of such a large cultural institution should be a combination of the functions of five cultural institutions: the museum itself , as well as an archive, library, research institute and scientific publishing house.

Today, the museum’s collection amounts to over half a million storage units, which made it possible to create more than ten memorial exhibitions, now known not only to Russians, but also far beyond the borders of our country: “F. M. Dostoevsky’s Apartment Museum”, “House-Museum of A. P. Chekhov”, “House-Museum of A. I. Herzen”, “House-Museum of M. Yu. Lermontov”, “Museum-Apartment of A. N. Tolstoy”, “Museum of the Silver Age”, “House-Museum of M. M. Prishvin" in the village of Dunino, House-Museum of B. L. Pasternak" in Peredelkino, "House-Museum of K. I. Chukovsky" in Peredelkino, "Information and cultural center "Museum of A. I. Solzhenitsyn" in Kislovodsk "

As part of the V. I. Dahl GMIRLI there are two exhibition areas in the departments “House of I. S. Ostroukhov in Trubniki” and “Apartment House of the Lyuboshchinsky-Vernadskys,” which is also the central administrative building.

STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT TASKS

1. Repair and restoration work and re-exposition of the department "House-Museum of A.P. Chekhov".


2. Creation on the basis of the department of GMIRLI named after V. I. Dahl "Museum of the History of Literature of the 20th Century", which will include exhibitions dedicated to writers of different aesthetic trends and destinies - both those who were officially recognized in the Soviet era (A.V. Lunacharsky), and persecuted, banned writers (O.E. Mandelstam), as well as authors of the Russian Diaspora ( A. M. Remizov).


3. Opening of the Museum Center as part of the State Medical Institute named after V. I. Dahl for the 200th anniversary of F. M. Dostoevsky "Moscow House of Dostoevsky".


4. Creation of a modern integrated depository, which will open an innovative “Museum of Sounding Literature” and organize open storage of museum objects.


5. Comprehensive modernization and re-exposition of the “Museum of the Silver Age” department and the creation on its basis Museum Center "Silver Age".


6. Creation of V.I. Dahl as part of GMIRLI National Exhibition Center "Ten Centuries of Russian Literature", in which for the first time in Russian museum practice a permanent exhibition on the history of Russian literature will be created.

MISSION OF THE MUSEUM

Absolutely all literary museums of the Russian Federation, except for GMIRLI, including the largest ones, are dedicated either to the work of one major writer, or to a certain period in the development of literature, or to a group of writers representing a certain region. Therefore, the museum presentation of the entire history of Russian literature is exclusively part of the mission of GMIRL.

This fact has always been recognized in the past; it is enough to return to the two quotes that precede this concept as epigraphs. And Vera Stepanovna Nechaeva (one of the founders of the House-Museum of F. M. Dostoevsky, the oldest museum department, now part of the State Historical Museum of Lithuania), and Klavdia Mikhailovna Vinogradova (long-term head of the House-Museum of A. P. Chekhov - a department of our museum) in one voices say that the main task of the country's flagship literary museum is to create a unified historical and literary exhibition.

V. S. Nechaeva writes in 1932 that “The restructuring of literary museums has barely begun; for its successful promotion, it is necessary to move on to the creation of a museum of literature, reflecting the course of development of the historical process in Russia.”

K. M. Vinogradova 30 years later, in 1961, emphasizes that “the museum has begun to prepare an exhibition on the history of Russian literature from ancient times to our present day. However, the lack of premises deprives him of the opportunity to develop this exhibition in full.”

We have to admit that this problem has not been solved to this day and remains the main component of the GMIRL mission.

Back in the 1960s, the then State Literary Museum was officially vested with the powers of the All-Russian Scientific and Methodological Center in the field of organizing work and methodological assistance in the development of all literary museums in the country. By order of the USSR Ministry of Culture dated July 26, 1963 No. 256, the museum was approved as “the head museum, which is entrusted with coordinating the research and exhibition work of single-profile museums in the country and providing them with advisory and methodological assistance.”

Over the past decades, similar assistance has been provided to more than fifty literary museums, some of which were created with the direct participation of specialists from the flagship museum (sometimes based on exhibits transferred from its collection), or new exhibitions were opened in these museums with the assistance of the flagship museum.

Nowadays, the implementation of this component of the GMIRLI mission is of particular importance, since the task is to organize network interaction of literary museums using modern means of communication and electronic technologies.

It is for these purposes that in 2016, on the initiative of GMIRLI and the State Museum of A.S. Pushkin, the Association of Literary Museums was created as part of the Union of Museums of Russia.

The initiative group for the creation of the Association, in addition to the initiators - GMIRLI and GMP, included the largest literary museums of Russia: the State Museum of L.N. Tolstoy (Moscow), the State Memorial and Nature Reserve "Museum-Estate of L.N. Tolstoy" Yasnaya Polyana "", State Museum-Reserve of M. A. Sholokhov, State Memorial and Natural Museum-Reserve of I. S. Turgenev "Spasskoye-Lutovinovo", Oryol United State Literary Museum of I. S. Turgenev, State Lermontov Museum-Reserve "Tarkhany" , All-Russian Museum of A. S. Pushkin (St. Petersburg), State Memorial and Natural Museum-Reserve of A. N. Ostrovsky “Schelykovo”, Historical and Cultural, Memorial Museum-Reserve “Cimmeria of M. A. Voloshin” in Crimea, Ulyanovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore named after I. A. Goncharov, State Literary and Memorial Museum of Anna Akhmatova in the Fountain House (St. Petersburg), State Historical and Literary Museum-Reserve of A. S. Pushkin (Moscow Region), Samara Literary and Memorial Museum named after. M. Gorky.

In recent years, this task has acquired particular importance: specialized federal programs have been created at the state level to promote the development of interest in reading: the National Program for the Support and Development of Reading, the Program for the Support of Children and Youth Reading in the Russian Federation.

In these programs, GMIRLI not only takes an active part, but in many cases also performs the functions of an initiator and developer of individual events. An example of the active participation of the museum in solving the problems of popularizing reading is the large-scale research exhibition project “Reading Russia”, implemented by the museum in 2015, which was officially declared the Year of Literature in the country.

The practice of recent decades shows that the process of creating new literary museums is quite slow, and their organization requires serious resources. In addition to the availability of collections, significant funds are also needed for the arrangement of memorial premises. Over the past decade, initiatives have been supported to create very few museums of contemporary writers, among them A. I. Solzhenitsyn, V. I. Belov, I. A. Brodsky, V. G. Rasputin. This means that a huge layer of modern literature is outside of museumification. Relics associated with the life and work of such major writers as, for example, Bella Akhmadulina or Fazil Iskander, at best end up in the property of collectors, and at worst disappear from cultural use altogether. In recent years, GMIRLI has gained fame not only as a popular platform for meetings, presentations, and discussions related to modern literature, but also as a resource center for museumification of the heritage of recently deceased, and in some cases, living major writers. This refers to writers of the newest era who were born, lived and worked not only in metropolitan centers, but also in all regions of the Russian Federation.

In addition to the functions of centralized presentation of the museum history of literature in different regions of the Russian Federation, described in the fourth component of the GMIRL mission, the task of presenting and promoting domestic literature abroad is also very relevant. There is no doubt that GMIRLI is the most universal resource center for organizing exhibition, scientific and cultural projects dedicated to Russian literature in museum, scientific, exhibition and educational centers in foreign countries.

The volume and structure of the museum's collection allow us to prepare and implement international projects of the highest level. Over the past few years alone, similar exhibitions have been held in Germany, France, the USA, England, China, Hungary, Spain and other countries; exhibitions prepared in partnership with leading foreign museum organizations have also been held in Russia. Among the largest international projects in recent years are the Russian-German-Swiss exhibition “Rilke and Russia” (2017–2018, Marbach, Zurich, Bern, Moscow), the exhibition “Dostoevsky and Schiller” as part of the “Russian Seasons” festival (2019, Marbach) .