Cryptography Museum in Moscow

The history of the Cryptography Museum is closely intertwined with the history of the building in which it is housed. The building that would become the museum was built nearly 140 years ago — in 1885 — and originally served as a shelter for orphaned boys and the children of poor priests. Up until the end of the Great Patriotic War the building housed schools and orphanages. After WWII and until 1954 the building housed the Marfinskaya laboratory, also known as a "Sharashka", where equipment for implementing secret special communications was developed. Among the staff were prisoners, mathematicians and linguists. One of those who served time in the Sharashka was the writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who captured that period in the novel The First Circle. In the mid-20th century the laboratory was transformed into the Research Institute of Automation, which was dedicated to developing secret communications equipment. One of the institute's key developments was the automated control system for Russia's nuclear forces, also known as the "nuclear briefcase." Until 2019 the building was classified, after which it was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Cryptography Museum. In addition to the building, the museum inherited unique artifacts and the institute's archives, which formed the basis of the collection and spurred new research.

Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn — Russian writer, playwright, essayist–publicist, poet, and public and political figure

The Cryptography Museum is a technological cluster with a unique collection of cipher equipment. Cryptography is the science of methods for protecting information. The emergence of new information channels has always given rise to new encryption methods, so the history of cryptography is told in the museum through the prism of the history of communications. The exhibition route is arranged in reverse chronology — from the digital reality back to times when the main means of transmitting information were letters and parchments. Interactive and tactile exhibits help visitors understand why and how people of different eras encrypted their messages long before the advent of end-to-end encryption technology. A separate part of the exhibition is devoted to the birth and development of writing.

The museum displays more than 5,000 exhibits, many of which were state secrets and have been declassified for open display. The collection includes originals and replicas of cipher machines, blueprints and documentation, and archival materials related to the work of scientists, intelligence officers and agents. The pride of the collection is the legendary Soviet cipher-encoding machine "Fialka-ZM" and the famous German cipher machine "Enigma".

Open storage system for exhibits. Photo: cryptography-museum.ru

The Cryptography Museum is an educational and outreach center. The museum regularly hosts lectures, film screenings and contemporary art exhibitions; it also runs workshops and guided tours, and publishes books. The museum's mission is to show how deeply cryptography is integrated into modern life and how it can influence society and the course of history.

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