1.10-31.12.2011
The Lenin Museum is closed on December 6th, December 24th to 26th, 2011 and January 1st, 2012.
From the first in the West to one of the last ones in the world
One of the only permanent Lenin Museums in the world is located at the Worker's Hall of Tampere, Finland, inside the hall where Lenin and Stalin met for the first time in 1905. Almost all Lenin museums elsewhere in the world have closed down, but now in Russia the Lenin Museum in Vyborg has started again with a new concept under a city museum status.
The original function of the museum was to present the life and ideas of
Lenin. The museum ethos was to remain aloof from the ideological education
practised by other Lenin museums, as well as from a tendency toward a
‘Lenin cult’. Today, the museum, among other things, collects,
exhibits and researches material related to Lenin's life and activities and
the history of the Soviet Union/Russia, particularly where the material relates
to connections with Finland and the Finns. After the disintegration of the
Soviet Union many documents, creating a more accurate picture of Lenin, have
been unearthed from various archives. In the 1990s the old objects and symbol
world of old Soviet socialism became museum goods. At the same time that
this unique body of material faces the threat of destruction, the importance
of the Lenin museum as the recorder of an entire era has grown.
In addition to the permanent exhibition, the museum constantly organises varying exhibitions on different themes. Donations and acquisitions keep increasing the collection of objects, works of art and documents. The museum is owned by the Finland-Russia Society and its activities are supported by Tampere city and the Ministry of Education.