Komsomolsk-on-Amur City Museum of Local Lore

The history of the Museum of Local Lore is closely connected with the history of the city. Komsomolsk-on-Amur was founded on December 10, 1932. And already on April 11, 1935, at a meeting of Komsomol activists, the foreman of the carpenters Alexey Smorodov made a proposal to establish a museum of local lore in the city under construction. In 1938, the museum, created on a voluntary basis, opened its first exhibition in the barracks of the construction site. The first builders of the city participated in its creation. Moscow artists Sofia Vitukhnovskaya and Hoskel Sandler, who were in the Far East on a creative business trip, provided great help in collecting materials and objects telling about the life of the indigenous inhabitants of the Amur region. On April 10, 1939, the museum was granted the status of a state institution subordinate to the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR.

Since 2013, the museum has been located in the building of the city’s first cinema, which is an architectural monument. The new building has an increased storage area; modern compact stock equipment has made it possible to display collections in accordance with all current requirements. The collections of the Museum of Local Lore have been formed thanks to several generations of scholars, local historians and researchers, it is the fruit of research, exploratory, collecting and descriptive work of the employees. To date, over 72 thousand museum items are stored in the museum’s funds, and each exhibit has its own history. More than 69 thousand guests visit the museum annually, and more than 40 exhibition projects are designed.