MUSEUM OF THE HISTORY OF THE POLITICAL POLICE (19th-20th CENTURIES)

A branch of the Museum of the Political History of Russia

6/2 (303-305a) Admiralteisky prospect 191065 St. Petersburg
Open: 11am - 5.30pm
Closed: Saturdays and Sundays
Tel. 312-2742
Nearest metro station: Nevsky prospect

The Museum of the History of the Political Police was founded in 1974 as a memorial museum to Felix Dzerzhinsky, Chairman of the All-Russian Commission for Combatting Counterrevolution, Sabotage and Speculation ('Cheka'). In 1994, after restoration, a new exhibition recounting the history of political surveillance in Russia before and after the revolution was opened here.

The museum is housed in a building constructed between 1788 and 1790 by Giacomo Quarenghi. From the second half of the 19th century, St. Petersburg's Administration and Security Police had their headquarters here. It was inside this building that Vera Zasulich shot the governor-general, Fedor Trepov. From late 1917 to the end of March 1918 it housed the All-Russian Cheka, later the municipal department of the Cheka (from 1923, the OGPU, Unified State Political Directorate).

The museum contains documents pertaining to the Third Department of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellory (founded in 1826), the Police Department of the Interior Ministry and the Gendarmes Corps, as well as materials from the Cheka, OGPU, NKVD and the Ministry of State Security focusing on the repressions of the Soviet period. The displays reconstruct the history and methods of the secret police, its agents-provocateurs (Degayev, Azef, Malinovsky) and eminent figures involved in political surveillance (Sudeikin, Zubatov).