The unique chronicle of the Pinega area

Pinega Local Lore Museum was created by schoolchildren on the basis of a school museum in 1962. At first, the museum was headed by the teacher of history and participant of the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War Vasily Ivanovich Stirmanov. The museum has been a branch of Arkhangelsk Regional Lore Museum since 1966 and since 1989, it has been located in the building a part of which is a flat of the first-guild merchant Yegor Ivanovich Volodin.

The museum holdings comprise more than 14 thousand objects, one of them is the tombstone of duke Vasily Golitsyn (the minion of tzarevna Sofia who was sent to the Pinega area to exile by Peter I). The main exhibitions demonstrate the natural and historical-cultural heritage of the Pinega district, they are “Household and businesses of the Pinega peasants up to 1917”, “Birds and animals in our forests”, “Pinega town in 1780–1917”, “Churches on the Pinega”, “Political repressions”.

The museum has about eight thousand visitors every year. The museum guests are offered numerous guided tours about the history of Pinega in different periods, the Civil War on the Pinega river, GULAG, local participants in the Great Patriotic War, narratresses of the Pinega area including Maria Krivopolenova, nature of the region. All in all, more than 230 guided tours are given by the museum employees annually.

The museum constantly works on identifying, preserving and studying the rich literary heritage of the poets and writers somehow connected to the Pinega: Fyodor Abramov, Alexander Grin (Grinevsky), Antonina Kolotilova, Maria Krivopolenova, Alexander Serafimovich (Popov) and Mikhail Prishvin. The research regularly results in temporary exhibitions of the “Literary Pinega area” cycle.

The museum actively cooperates with the State Darwin Museum (Moscow) regarding the study of the historical-cultural and natural heritage of the Russian North.

Every year, the museum organises events on the International Museum Day (18 May) and Arts Night, Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions (30 October), the traditional Pinega readings; “Sunday Museum meetings” are frequently held at the museum exposition and exhibitions.

On Pinega Day, which is celebrated on 20 August, the museum specialists organise historical quests around Pinega settlement.