Reflecting on Life in Moscow through the Forgotten

Moscow is a city full of incredible cultural and historical relics, much of it preserved in the form of architecture and cultural institutions. While Moscow is home to some of Russia’s most well-known and sought-after sites, including the Red Square and Kremlin, it also hosts a number of prominent museums that commemorate the nation’s history, art, culture and notable figures. For example, the State Tretyakov Gallery and the Moscow Kremlin Museums, two of the most popular museums in Moscow, welcome close to 4 million visitors per year combined. However, alongside these well-known sites lie lesser-known gems that often provide more tailored looks into narrower yet equally fascinating areas of Russian culture, ranging from a Vodka History Museum to a Gulag Museum that provide visitors and inhabitants with a look into the city and nation’s multi-faceted past. These smaller, unique museums that lie “off the beaten path” within Moscow allow visitors to gain a more nuanced understanding of a nation that has often been heavily branded and generalized throughout the past and present, and can offer them an unexpected taste of a rich culture that can easily be overshadowed by the politics of the largest country in the world.

This exhibit lists five different museums “off the beaten path” of Moscow that each reveal a memorable remnant of the city’s history that is particularly unique and historically important to Moscow and the Russian nation at large. The path begins at the Moscow Metro Museum, continues through the Moscow Gulag Museum, Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines and “Lights of Moscow” Museum, and finally ends at the Vodka History Museum. 

Most of the sites covered in this gallery are dedicated to elements of Soviet history that were seemingly unimpressive parts of one’s daily routine and lifestyle, with the exception of the Gulag. However, even if the Gulag seems to be a topic much heavier and hardly related to the themes of the other four museums, one thing that all five have in common is that for whatever reason, whether it is because they were rather common elements of daily life taken for granted, or memories too controversial and sensitive to be openly discussed, they are prone to be easily forgotten and buried eternally without the efforts of continuing generations to bring these overlooked relics to the forefront of societal discourse and consciousness. Without the active efforts of ongoing generations to rediscover these objects and sites that defined their daily lives spent in Moscow– whether it is the streetlamps that lined the street by their childhood home, the metro station they frequent to travel to work daily, or the concept of a ‘Gulag’ that seems almost mythical with so many neighbors who still deny its past existence – these may have never left the hazy subconscious of the nation’s memory, let alone become something to be historicized.