Mordovian Republican United Museum of local lore named after I. D. Voronin

Republic of Mordovia
Saranskaya str. 2, Saransk, Republic of Mordovia
Phones: +7 (8342) 39-14-97
Web site: http://mrkm.ru/

The Mordovian Republican United Museum of local lore is a real repository of monuments of nature, history, material and spiritual culture of the Mordovian people. It has several collections: archaeological, ethnographic, numismatic, and others.

In the ethnographic collection, you can see rare and ancient household items of the Mordovian people: cold and firearms, leather and wood products, traditional clothing, dishes.

Another interesting collection is dedicated to furniture from different eras. In the hall there are tables and cabinets of various purposes and sizes, sideboards, sofas, armchairs. And a large dacha set made of bamboo from the beginning of the XX century, created by the masters of the Buk factory in Penza. This collection also includes items that belonged to famous people. For example, the Desk and bookcase of the famous Soviet writer Pyotr Kirillov, the Bureau of the XIX century, which belonged to the famous Russian poet and publicist Nikolai Ogarev, and many others.

The numismatic collection of the Museum includes more than 25 thousand items: Russian, Western European, and Eastern coins, orders and medals, tokens, and paper currency.

The Museum also provides complete information about the history of the city of Saransk (the capital of Mordovia), its sights and artefacts of the XVIII-XIX centuries that have survived to the present day.

The Museum was established after the Revolution - in November 1918 and six months later is open to all comers. At that time, the Museum displayed collections of porcelain, paintings, sculptures and other items transferred from the estates and the city office, which were placed in the Windows of the former haberdashery store "Slavyansky Bazar". In ten years, the Museum has grown and changed its status, becoming the Mordovian regional Museum of local lore. In the 1930s, it had more than five thousand exhibits. In 1935, it was renamed the Central Museum of local lore and moved to a new building.

The local history Museum survived the war years without losses. In the 50s, it was repeatedly closed for major repairs and reconstruction of the exposition. Opened in 1957, the "renewed" Museum for the first time presented interesting materials about electrification and gasification, about industrial and agricultural enterprises of Mordovia, about the work of the rear during the great Patriotic war and, of course, about military heroes.

For many years, the Republican Museum of local lore was the only Museum institution in Mordovia, so the appearance of other museums was somehow connected with it. For example, when the Mordovian Republican art gallery named after F. V. Sychkov was opened, some of the paintings were transferred to it by the local history Museum. These were the works of Mordovian artists and the works of the sculptor Stepan Erzi.

Currently, the Museum has nine branches. The Mordovian Republican United Museum of local lore is included in the list of especially valuable objects of cultural heritage of the Republic of Mordovia. In 2005, it was named after the founder of scientific local history of Mordovia – Ivan Dmitrievich Voronin. Since August 2017, the Museum has been located in a new modern building.

For several decades, the Museum was located in the former Three-Holy Church.

One of the unusual expositions is called "Samples of equipment". Various devices for recording and reproducing sound are displayed in the hall. These are gramophones, portable gramophones, radiols, phonographs, and even a music Cabinet. One of the most popular exhibits is the TV and radio station "Zhiguli-59", which was released at the Kuibyshev plant "Screen" in 1959.