Sergei Kirov Museum

Housed in the apartment where Sergei Mironovich Kirov spent the last eight years of his life, this museum is both a memorial to the Bolshevik revolutionary, and a museum of the history of Leningrad in the 1920s and 1930s (when Kirov, as head of the local Party, was the effective ruler of the city).

A key figure in the early years of Soviet rule, Kirov had risen through the Party ranks in the Caucasus as a close ally of Josef Stalin but, once appointed to Leningrad in 1926, was often perceived as a nexus of opposition to Stalin's increasing repression of dissent within the Party. Kirov was assassinated in 1934 and, whether or not Stalin was behind the killing, he used it as an excuse to launch the Great Purge of the late 1930s. For all these reasons - and for his acknowledged efficiency as an administrator - Kirov is still held in respect in St. Petersburg, and numerous local institutions and enterprises honour his name.

Sergey Kirov's study - the main room of the apartment-museum
The Kirov family's bedroom
Kitchen in the Kirov apartment
Reconstruction of Kirov's study in Smolny
Part of the Childhood in the USSR exhibition

The Sergei Kirov Memorial Apartment Museum is located in an attractive apartment building of the 1900s on Kamenoostrovsky Prospekt. At the centre of the museum's collection are the eight rooms of Kirov's apartment, fully preserved or restored using contemporary photographs. This elegant residence bears witness to the relative comfort enjoyed by the higher echelons of the Party, to Kirov's passion for hunting, and to the plentiful but rather peculiar range of gifts presented to Party leaders by factories and Communist organizations.

Other exhibitions in the museum include "Leningrad in the 1920s and 1930s", which contains a reconstruction of Kirov's office in the Smolny Party headquarters as well as an impressive archive of official photographs of the city. There is a special interactive display that charts the complex rationing system endured by all citizens in the early 1930s, and a section devoted to childhood in the pre-war years of the Soviet Union. The latest addition to the museum is a computerized display for children tracing the history of Kamenoostrovsky Prospekt, one of St. Petersburg's largest and most beautiful streets.

Location:	26-28, Kamenoostrovsky Prospekt
Metro:	Gorkovskaya or Petrogradskaya
Telephone:	+7 (812) 346-0217, +7 (812) 346-0289
Open:	Daily from 11am to 6pm (ticket office until 5.30pm)
Closed:	Wednesdays
Website:	http://www.spbmuseum.ru/themuseum/museum_complex/kirov_museum/?lang_ui=en
Admission:	RUB 150.00. Students/children: RUB 100.00
Photo and video:	free/included
Accessibility note:	Elevator/lift is available. Please call in advance as staff assistance may be required.