Museum of History and Culture of the Middle Kama Region

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the ancient city on Kama - Sarapul (today as part of the Udmurt Republic) finally developed as the administrative and economic center of the Middle Kama region. Sarapul becomes a city with a developed leather and footwear industry, rich trade, wide cultural and spiritual ties.

The Sarapul Zemstvo Museum was created by the efforts and efforts of enthusiasts-socialists, collectors, true patriots of their city.

As early as 1905, the Sarapul district zemstvo, in its concern for out-of-school education of the population, drew attention to the absence in Sarapul of an institution that could serve to study local life and local antiquity. Many archaeological rarities, items of ancient writing, samples of ancient clothes, utensils coming out of household were lost irretrievably.

In view of this, the county government, on the initiative of Chairman Mikhail Semenovich Tyunin, submitted to the next district Zemstvo Assembly in 1905 a report on the establishment of the Zemstvo Museum in the city of Sarapul.

The museum was established in 1909 on the initiative of the public, with the support of the Zemstvo Council. At the origins of its creation were M.S. Tyunin - Chairman of the Zemstvo Council; scientist-entomologist L.K. Krulikovskiy; editor of the newspaper "Prikamskaya Zhizda" N.E. Onchukov; free practicing doctor F.V. Streltsov; artist P.P. Berkutov; Secretary of the Zemstvo Council N.S. Musersky, who managed to fascinate the idea of creating a museum of citizens.

The initiators of the museum were true patriots and enthusiastic local historians, they collected unique items that laid the foundation for many museum collections. Thus, Leonid Konstantinovich Krulikovsky gave to the museum the most spectacular part of his unique collection of exotic butterflies; the famous scientist, ethnographer and folklorist Nikolai Evgenievich Onchukov initiated the ethnographic collection of the museum. Fedor Vasilyevich Streltsov donated his numismatic collection, constantly replenished to this day. The wonderful library, which is now included in the fund of a rare book, was donated to the museum by Nikolai Nikolaevich Blinov - a teacher, local historian, writer.

The archaeological collection began to form as a result of research conducted by Lev Afrikanovich Berkutov on behalf of the museum in the former Sarapul district.

At the invitation of L.A. Berkutov, the famous Finnish archaeologist Talgren took part in the study of the archaeological collection of the museum. In the period since 1910, Berkutov made excavations on a number of prekamsk settlement Sarapul district. In the summer of 1913, the Council of the Museum decided to make a map of all known fortifications and mounds, entrusting it to L.A. Berkutov. In the same year, Lev Afrikanovich excavated the mound at D. Yushkova.

The natural-scientific collection of the museum was formed by L. K. Krulikovsky, who made a great contribution to the study of the nature of the region. D.V. Shaberdin, an active member of the Society for the Study of the Kama Territory, who in 1919 became the director of the museum, we owe a fairly complete collection of samples of local fauna - his taxidermic works still form a significant part of the zoological collection.

In addition, the founders began collecting ancient books and publications related to the local region. Correspondence was conducted with museums and scientific societies on providing the museum with statutes, catalogues and publications of these societies. All these appeals were successful: museums and societies sent their publications.

Thus, with the beginning of the activities of the Museum of the Sarapul Zemstvo, collections began to form: archaeological, ethnographic, natural-scientific, art collection of a rare book, which arose as a museum library.

In a brief outline of the activities of the Sarapul Museum for the first year of its existence, it was written: “Involving the general population to the review of the museum’s collections will undoubtedly entail (which is already noted at the present time) a new influx of valuable objects to the museum and therefore already now we can say that the existence of the museum in the future can be considered secure. Without predetermining the future of the educational activities of the museum, as an institution at which scientific societies can be formed, lectures on subjects corresponding to its goals are given, educational excursions are organized in order to get acquainted with the local region and its antiquity, we can say that already now it is an educational institution that is very useful for the population and especially for students ...”

The first art exhibition was held in Sarapul in 1909, the year the Museum opened. Its founders addressed a letter to Alexander Porfirievich Svedsky with a request to donate paintings.

Artists, brothers, Alexander and Pavel Svedsky, who constantly lived in Italy, where they had their own studio in Rome, in which all Russian artists who visited the Eternal City visited, were closely connected with the Kama region: a few versts from Sarapul was their family estate Mikhailovsky factory, where they often visited in the summer.

In December 1909, an article appeared in the local newspaper Prikamskaya Zhizd (Picture of Svedsky in Sarapul). It told about the painting “Execution of Yermak”, which A. Svedsky presented to the museum. A huge canvas (400 x 350 cm) was exhibited for viewing in the assembly hall of the women's gymnasium.

The remarkable research traditions of the museum were laid at the beginning of the XX century, when in 1913 the Scientific Society for the Study of the Prikamsky Territory was created in Sarapul, which was patronized by world-renowned scientists: Alexander Andreevich Spitsyn – a member of the Imperial Archaeological Commission; Dmitry Konstantinovich Zelenin – an outstanding Russian ethnographer, doctor of sciences, professor. One of the scientific forms of work was the issues of the “News of the Sarapul Museum”. The first issue was published in September 1911 and contained articles by L. Krulikovsky, G. G. Vereshchagin and V. F. Berdnikov. In the next three issues of “Izvestia...” published scientific works on the history of the city of Sarapul and the Vyatka province: N.N. Blinov, L.A. Berkutov, G.G. Vereshchagin, Utrobin, L.K. Krulikovskiy.

The museum exchanged printed works with many institutions. Among them were Minusinsky and Perm museums, the library of the Museum of the Academy of Sciences, the Russian Geographical Society, the Moscow Society for Testing Nature, the Kazan Society of History and Ethnography, the Ural Society of Natural History Lovers, the East Siberian Department of the Geographical Society and many others. The Museum Council also made requests to the Murmansk Biological Station and the Zoological Museum of the Academy of Sciences for various exhibits. In June 1913, collections of echinoderms and shellfish were sent from the zoological museum of the Academy of Sciences in exchange for the rhino skull.

Initially, the Museum was located in 2 classrooms of the women's gymnasium, allocated by the Board of Trustees. The city Duma repeatedly submitted the question of expanding the museum, but its decision was prevented by the outbreak of the First World War, then the revolution.

Finally, in 1921, the museum was allocated a separate two-storey brick building, the construction of which was started in 1914 as the Nikolaev school. In this building, built in the late Art Nouveau style, and now is the head museum of Sarapul.

In 1924-1926, during the heyday of Soviet local history, the museum was actively completed from the State Museum Fund. Established in 1918 with the active participation of I.E. Grabar, the fund was intended for the centralization and further distribution of art monuments between museums of different profiles. The museum receives 40 works by famous Russian artists of the late XIX - early XX century. Among them are works: M.V. Nesterov “The Head of a Boy”, I.K. Aivazovsky “Sunset”, A.P. Bogolyubov “View of a French City”, F.A. Bronnikov “Italian Landscape” (from the “Spoleto” series), S.P. Kuvshinnikova “Field Flowers”.

Here in 1939, after the arrest of Kuzebay Gerda, the Udmurt National Museum created by him was transferred from Izhevsk, returned to the capital of the republic only on April 1, 1946.

During the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the museum performed a special mission - it served as a museum-storage of Leningrad suburban palaces-museums. In the autumn of 1941 he officially received this title. More than 1,000 boxes with collections from the artistic and architectural palace and park ensembles of Petrodvorets, Pushkin (Tsarskoye Selo), Lomonosov (Oranienbaum), Pavlovsk, Gatchina arrived in trains to Sarapul in 1941. About 90,000 objects, including paintings, carpets and tapestries, porcelain and furniture – real masterpieces of cultural heritage – were preserved in the walls of the Sarapul Museum during the difficult war years. The director of the museum-storage is appointed Legzdin (name and patronymic are not established).

After the war, the museum acquired the status of Sarapul Museum of Local History. Expositions corresponding to that time were built. The museum staff was small. Basically, excursions, including the city, were conducted by the director of the museum - Kondratiev Yakov Konstantinovich.

The 1980s were fruitful for the museum. The museum goes to a new level: Sarapul local history becomes the “Museum of History and Culture of the Middle Kama region” and returns to its original tasks – the study of the region. During this period, exposition and educational work was intensified, archaeological research was resumed by employees.

In 1987, the first branch of the museum appeared in the city - the memorial historical and biographical house-museum of academician N.V. Melnikov. It reconstructed the petty-bourgeois atmosphere of the family of a shoemaker-homemaker, so typical for Sarapul of the time in which the outstanding scientist grew up and formed, collected memorial monuments revealing the scientific activity of the miner.

In 1995, the Art and Exhibition Complex of the Museum was opened in the former country mansion of merchant P.A. Bashenin - an architectural monument of federal significance, a pearl not only of Sarapul, but also of Udmurtia as a whole. The building was built in the Art Nouveau style, presumably according to the project of the famous architect Pavel Trubnikov. The house, located in a picturesque park, amazes with the elegance of its appearance - it seems airy and light, although built of stone. In the halls of the art and exhibition complex, the works of famous artists are presented; here the interiors of the turn of the XIX - XX centuries are recreated, immersing the visitor in the atmosphere of life of the enlightened Russian merchants. The former owner of the house, mayor Pavel Andreyevich Bashenin was an educated and progressive man, a great patriot who made a huge contribution to the development of the city. His invisible presence is constantly felt in the house – and visible, too: theatrical excursions are very successful, the characters of which are the Bashenin couple: Pavel Andreevich and Lyudmila Nikolaevna.

Now the Museum of History and Culture of the Middle Kama region is one of the most interesting and significant museums of Udmurtia. Its collection consists of 21 collections, totaling more than two hundred thousand museum items. The Sarapul museum complex includes three objects: the historical and local history (head) museum, the art and exhibition complex "Dacha Bashenin" and the house-museum named after academician N.V. Melnikov.

Today, the Sarapula museum complex is a place of cultural leisure and a scientific and educational institution.

Among the rarities of the museum are ancient Egyptian cult figures of Ushebti, the banner of the Napoleonic Guard, one of the first printing old-printed books - the educational Gospel of 1595; Daguerreotypes of the 1850s, the newsreel of Sarapul in 1912.

Currently, the researchers of the museum continue research work on the study of the nature and cultural and historical heritage of Sarapul and the region.

Today, in continuation of the traditions laid down by its founders, the museum strives to create close creative contacts with the scientific and artistic world of the region. The museum cooperates with specialists of the Udmurt State University (Izhevsk), the Udmurt Institute of History, Language and Literature of the UrO RAS (Izhevsk), the Yelabuga Pedagogical University (Elabuga), the Kuzebai Gerda National Museum of the Udmurt Republic (Izhevsk), the Udmurt Republican Museum of Fine Arts (Izhevsk), the Union of Artists of Udmurtia (Izhevsk) and other institutions, organizations, as well as persons. The museum organizes regional and Russian conferences; takes an active part in the work of regional, Russian and international scientific and practical conferences, seminars and other forums organized and held by partners in the field of culture and science.