Museums of Russia: Exhibition marking the 110th anniversary of the first exposition of Mikhailovskoye, the birthplace of Alexander Pushkin, presented at the Pushkin Museum-Reserve

The Mikhailovskoye Museum-Reserve (Pskov Region) presented an exhibition devoted to the 110th anniversary of the first exposition in Mikhailovskoye. It is entitled "...To Obtain the Village of Mikhailovskoye and Make a Socially Useful Enterprise". The exhibition will run until November 7, 2021.

2021 marks the 110th anniversary of the event that became one of the milestones on the way of museumification of the Pushkin estate. It was the opening of the Colony for Elderly Writers in the village of Mikhailovskoye.

The exhibition covers a period from 1899 to 1918 - the establishment and activity of the Colony for Elderly Writers in Mikhailovskoye. The exposition is based on photographs from the collections of the Pushkin Museum-Reserve and the National Pushkin Museum. Besides, it features pieces of applied art, rare books, documents and periodicals.

The Pushkin Museum-Reserve has a century-old history. The date of the revival of the State Museum-Reserve is March 17, 1922, when the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a draft resolution "On the Nationalization of the Mikhailovskoye and Trigorskoye Estates, as well as the Alexander Pushkin's Burial Place in the Svyatogorsky Monastery''. The Council of People's Commissars issued a decree that officially confirmed the museification of Pushkin's places.

However, people realized the importance of preserving the memory of Alexander Pushkin and his stay in Mikhailovskoye much earlier, at the end of the XIX century. Its results were the organization of the celebration of the poet's centenary in 1899 and the state redemption of Mikhailovskoye from the poet's son, G. A. Pushkin. The emerging Russian trend of the late XIX century of perpetuating the memory of prominent figures by museums and the process of creating museums at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries meant that a similar fate awaited Mikhailovskoye.

The creation of a literary Pushkin museum had several stages in the early XX century. One of the most significant steps in this process is the transfer of Mikhailovskoye to the jurisdiction of the Pskov Noble Assembly in 1907 and the creation of a charitable institution in 1911 - the Colony for Elderly Writers. This institution was intended for orphans and widows of writers, as well as for disabling writers who were deprived from literary work. Besides writers, their orphans and widows, the Colony accepted disabled and elderly teachers and tutors of rural schools. All Colony residents had the right to free room and board (not only accommodation but also food, servants, etc.). The Colony provided a free public library, a reading room, a workroom, a drawing-room, a dining room, an infirmary, a bathhouse and a boat. There was easy communication with the Holy Mountains with a church, post office, telegraph office and The Charter of the Colony of Writers designated the direction of development of Mikhailovskoye. It included the exhibition activity and further museification of the Hannibals-Pushkin estate. It was the first experience of creating a historical and literary museum in a family estate. The structure of the government of imperial Russia had no special department which guided museums and related policy of consolidation. There was no museum legislation and no methodological documents for the creation of museum expositions.

The opening in 1911 of a charitable institution - the Alexander Pushkin Colony for Elderly Writers - is the most significant step on the way from the Gannibal-Pushkin estate to the future State Museum-Reserve. It solved completely new tasks for the national culture. The first exposition in Mikhailovskoye and the protection of the former landlord's estate immortalized the poet. Thus, the beginning of the XX century laid the foundation of the future Pushkin Museum-Reserve.