Libraries of Russia: The exhibition "Moscow, 1917. A View from the Vagankovsky Hill" in the Russian State Library

June 14, 2017 in the Ivanovo Hall of the Russian State Library (Moscow) is taking place the opening day of the exhibition "Moscow, 1917. A View from the Vagankovskogo Hill". The exposition tells about the main events in the life of the Rumyantsev Museum in 1917 and its employees, for whom the main task was to save their funds and, while remaining "custodians of civilization", to save private collections of owners who suffered in the revolutionary year. For the first time there will be presented unique museum items of the Rumyantsev Museum, which were left after the disbandment of the collection in the 1920s in the RSL collection, as well as original documents and photographs, newspapers, magazines, posters, postcards, leaflets telling about the fateful events for the country and the Rumyantsev Museum itself in Moscow in 1917. For visitors, the exhibition will begin its work on June 15.

The exhibition "Moscow, 1917. A View from the Vagankovskogo Hill" consists of two parts: the first is devoted to the history of the Rumyantsev Museum in revolutionary days, the second one tells about the dramatic events in Moscow.

In the Ivanovo Hall, which is a reconstructed part of the picture gallery of the Rumyantsev Museum, visitors will be traveled in 1917. In the hall of the council of the museum, the director's office and the staff room, they will be surrounded by original objects, documents and voices of the era.

The second part of the exhibition is devoted to revolutionary Moscow. Vagankovskiy hill, which housed the Rumyantsev Museum, was at the very center of the revolutionary events of 1917. Near the museum the shells were torn, bloody battles were fought. This is shown by materials from the funds of the RSL, many of which are demonstrated for the first time. Photographs, postcards, letters and other documents tell about the events around the Vagankovsky Hill, drawing a vivid picture of the events that took place, and newspapers, magazines, posters complete the story of the life of the city in 1917. Some of the leaflets presented at the exhibition were literally picked up by the staff of the Rumyantsev Museum on the streets of revolutionary Moscow.

The events of 1917 predetermined the fate of the Rumyantsev Museum. In the early 1920's all non-book collections - paintings, graphics, numismatics, porcelain, minerals, etc. - began to be transferred to other museums. They were included in the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the State Historical Museum and many others. In July 1925, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR adopted a resolution on the liquidation of the Rumyantsev Museum, on the basis of the library of which the State Library of the USSR named after V. I. Lenin was established.

The moods and emotions of the museum staff, new revolutionary trends and uneasy relations in the collective of the museum and library are told by the exhibits in the Ivanovo Hall. The exhibition shows how the Rumiantsevsky Museum lived, preserved itself and developed in the year when the world turned over its windows.

The preparatory materials and pages of the manuscript of Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn's novel "The Red Wheel", dedicated to the spring revolutionary days of 1917 in Moscow, were organically included in the exhibition.