Bratsk Museum of the History of Political Exile

About museum

The museum building in Bratsk-Ostrozhnoye is registered with the Center for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Heritage of the Irkutsk Region and has local significance. It was opened at the initiative of exiled Bolshevik Valentin Vladimirovich Ryabikov and activists Mikhail Yefimovich Karpov, Yakov Nikolaevich Yurin and Yakov Mikhailovich Osedlov. It housed valuable documents of the Bratsk archive, and also had departments of archaeology, paleontology, natural history, economy and everyday life, and numismatics. In 1919 the museum was moved to a school building, but in 1934 it burned down along with the school. Today only the document 'Subject Index of the Museum', written by M. E. Karpov — who for a long time was a schoolteacher and the museum's custodian — remains. The first exhibition was dedicated to the history of political exile in Bratsk and the Bratsk district from the time of protopope Avvakum's stay in the tower of the Bratsk ostrog. Since 1999 the museum has hosted temporary exhibitions, for example 'The Karpov Family in the History of Bratsk', 'The Enchanting World of Crystals', 'Heroes of the War of 1941–1945', 'A Pood of Salt', 'Both Knit and Sew.'