The State Historical Museum

In 1874, a contest was announced by Emperor Alexander II for the design and construction for a national museum of history for Russia. The museum was opened to the public in 1883 in Red Square. The requirements were as follows: 

“Building facades should be styled after monuments of the 16th and 17th centuries, such as: Intercession Cathedral (Saint Basil the Blessed) in Red Square, a bell tower in the Alexandrovsky large village, church of the Ascension and John the Forerunner in Kolomenskoye, the Nativity church in Putinki, churches of Georgian Holy Mother in Moscow, Cathedral in Rostov the Great, churches of Yaroslavl.”

By 1875, there were four competitive entries and designs up for consideration, but the winning designers, V. O. Shervud and A. A. Semenov had the proposal that embodied the new nationalistic architecture style that had been spreading throughout Moscow since the mid-19th century. Oddly enough, the motto of this museum was “Fatherland.” As a the mother-land/ heartland of Russia, Moscow has historically been depicted by Russian literature as a distinctly feminine city (Leo Tolstoy’s chapter XX in War and Peace, for example, as well as his persistent personification of the city is indicative of this). But, during this time in Russia’s history, the capital was actually in St. Petersburg—the masculine heart of the nation, and the current political center of Russia (St. Petersburg was the capital of Russia from 1713-1918).