Pugachev Local History Museum

On December 29, 2009, the Pugachev Museum of Local Lore (Saratov region) was named after the outstanding countryman K.I. Zhuravlev – geologist-paleontologist, ethnographer, archaeologist, researcher of the history of the Saratov region, director of the museum from 1921 to 1946.
The Museum of the local region in the city of Pugachev was founded on March 20, 1919 as a branch of the Central Museum at the District Department of Public Education. The organizers of the museum were Peter Illarionovich Penkov and Efim Ivanovich Korenevsky. The first exhibits of the museum were handwritten and old printed books, as well as icons and clothes of clergymen from the sacristy of the abolished Irgiz monasteries. In addition, it began to receive numerous archival materials. The museum quickly became popular, with 2,225 visitors in its first ten months.
On July 19, 1920, at a meeting of the Out-of-School Pedagogical Department of the Pugachev District Department of Public Education, the question of separating the museum of the local region from the central museum was raised. December 20, 1921 Konstantin Ivanovich Zhuravlev was appointed director of the already independent museum of the local region.
Konstantin Ivanovich Zhuravlev was born on November 2, 1901 in the village of Varvarovka of the Kamenskaya volost of the Nikolaev district of the Samara province (now Pugachevsky district of the Saratov region). After graduating from the village school, he entered the Nikolaev Theological School. For several years he studied at the Samara Theological Seminary, but as a result of revolutionary events and material difficulties, in September 1918 he switched to teaching work in school. Since the creation of the museum of the local region in Pugachev, Konstantin Ivanovich actively helped its organizers. Since then, his whole fate has been connected with the museum, where he worked for the rest of his life.
Deploying museum activities, Konstantin Ivanovich conducted active search and research work and became an excellent connoisseur of the vast Trans-Volga steppes. Every year he organized field research, collecting archaeological and paleontological materials in the territories of the Pugachev, Ivanteev, Perelyub and Krasnopartisan regions, which replenished the museum collections.
In May 1926, Konstantin Ivanovich Zhuravlev brought the skull and tusks of a mammoth from the village of Cordon, which are still the only ones in the Saratov and Samara regions.
K.I. Zhuravlev devoted much time to geological research of the region. He, for example, found that local limestones belong to the Upper Carboniferous period, and not to the Permian, as previously thought. This forced experts to take a new look at the geological structure of the Volga region.
In 1931, K.I. Zhuravlev seriously engaged in paleontology. This was due to the beginning of the development of the Savelievskoye deposit of combustible shale on the Sakme River in the Krasnopartisan district of the Saratov region. In the mine, he found two skeletons of an ichthyosaur and a complete skeleton of a pliosaur, which he collected and installed in a museum for the first time in our country. This suggests that already in the 1930s, the exhibits of the Pugachev Museum had world scientific significance. By 1940, K.I. Zhuravlev became a famous paleontologist in the USSR. His works were published in central journals: “News of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR”, “News of Science”.
K.I. Zhuravlev’s research and gathering activities were extremely multifaceted, in the 1920s he saved church objects and books from the libraries of Irgiz monasteries, which are now considered masterpieces of Russian culture. The result of expeditions to the Bashkir villages was a rich and diverse material, which allowed to open an ethnographic department in the museum. On February 23, 1939, on his initiative, a memorial Chapaev House-Museum was opened in Pugachev. In the last years of his life, already seriously ill, he wrote the history of the city of Pugachev. Konstantin Ivanovich Zhuravlev died on January 27, 1950 at the age of 48 years.
Currently, the Pugachev Museum of Local Lore, which celebrated its 90th anniversary, stored more than 35 thousand exhibits, many of which are unique. There's a rich library. The museum is visited annually by more than 20 thousand people. The building in which the museum is located is located in the city center, it is a monument of history and culture of local importance. In May 2009, in memory of K.I. Zhuravlev, a memorial plaque was installed on the museum building.