The Big Life of a Small House.

What is the Georgy Semyonovich Shpagin house-museum like today? First of all, it is one of the most important objects of cultural and historical heritage not only at the city or regional level, but even of federal significance. Secondly, it is the only building completely preserved from among all those occupied by the famous designer's family during his lifetime. Today the house-museum building almost entirely retains the original interior of the past century and the authentic belongings of Georgy Semyonovich Shpagin's family. The house itself has a history of more than a hundred years. The wooden izba was built at the beginning of the 20th century by the volost scribe Ivan Fyodorovich Ivanov, an official of local rural, or as we now say, municipal importance. At first the house was not divided into two halves; Ivanov added a fifth wall and expanded the living space only after the family had two sons: one adopted and one biological. Later, the front half, already in Soviet times, was transferred to the jurisdiction of the settlement council and rented out until the start of the Great Patriotic War, when the designer Shpagin's family evacuated from Zagorsk together with the factory and moved into the house.

During the time the gunsmith's family lived there, the five-walled house in many ways did not differ from wooden wartime buildings. The izba adjoined a vegetable garden, a banya, and a garage. Outside, beyond the fence by the road, lilac bushes bloomed lavishly in warm weather. All this was thanks to the caring feminine hands of the occupants of the front half of the house.

In 1952, after Georgy Semyonovich's death, the family left the now-familiar dwelling and moved away from Vyatskiye Polyany. For many years the house once again became a rental property. Its status as a museum began only thirty years later, when in 1982 the plant's management, headed by F.I. Treshchev, succeeded in transferring the building to the Museum of Labor Glory of the 'Molot' factory.

The establishment and development of the G.S. Shpagin House-Museum is inextricably linked with the people who literally devoted themselves to preserving the memory of the gunsmith's life. First of all, these are G.A. Treshcheva, head of the plant's scientific and technical information department; P.A. Zagumennov, the first director of the Molot factory's Museum of Labor Glory; and G.G. Kagirova, who for 23 years was the long-serving director of the factory museum, 18 of those years leading its branch, the G.S. Shpagin House-Museum, and personally conducting tours. It was Guzel Galimkhanovna who shared with us memories of those first years, when, thanks to continuous contacts with G.S. Shpagin's daughters, it was possible to recreate the house's interior and obtain the original items and furniture of the gunsmith that had been preserved at his dacha near Moscow. Then followed joint work by museum staff with technologists and craftsmen from the plant's wood-processing shop to restore the furniture. And all of this took place against the backdrop of the difficult Perestroika period in the country.

The 'turbulent' 1990s were a separate stage in the house-museum's life. G.G. Kagirova recounts: '...I went through long and difficult years, from the mid-90s until the transfer of the museum into the structure of the city historical museum. This was my epic! How many hardships had to be endured — it's hard to believe!... These were years of great historical change in the country, at the plant, and in the city. Parades of festive dates and celebrations were behind us. There was little attention left for the museum. And this little historic house became almost my own hut; I had to take care of everything myself. The heating system was imperfect and often failed. Heating was stove-based; there was the worry about firewood, which over the years became difficult to obtain due to the reduction of work in the plant's wood-processing shop. Later it had to be sourced from villages by arrangement... I had to handle everything myself; there was no one to ask. Despite the difficulties, we managed to do some improvement work on the house; the main task was improving the heating system and, over the years, converting to natural gas.'

In the 2010s an era of change began. The G.S. Shpagin House-Museum 'cut a window' into the wide world of information thanks to cooperation with the Russian Military-Historical Society during the international festival 'Intermuseum-2014' in Moscow. The newly landscaped grounds quickly began to attract both guests and city residents.

The Shpagin House-Museum, as part of the Vyatskopolyansky Historical Museum, regularly participates in state competitions and receives funding to implement grants. Thanks to the tireless work of the leadership to improve museum operations, the memorial complex now has a stationary laser safe shooting range for firing historical weapons and a new interactive range with a wide selection of exercises. The house-museum's anniversary in 2022 was marked by another event. Thanks to participation in a government presidential grants competition, the director of the Historical Museum, M.Yu. Pislegina, solemnly opened on August 14 a new format for the museum — the digest tour 'Shpagin's Trail'. On Lenina Street, from house No. 1 to the monument to G.S. Shpagin, banners stand with textual information and links to audio podcasts. Now every resident of Vyatskiye Polyany can independently, using modern technologies, learn in detail about the life and achievements of our fellow countryman and designer Georgy Semyonovich Shpagin.

The original, recreated, and carefully preserved interior of the House fully reflects the everyday life of an entire era in all its details (the 1940s–1970s): many people in Vyatskiye Polyany lived in such conditions. This preserved atmosphere allows the site to be used not only as a memorial place but also as an opportunity to immerse visitors in those years by conducting museum lessons dedicated to that period of the city's and country's history. In the future the House-Museum intends to continue pleasantly surprising its visitors.