Museum of State Security Agencies

About museum

Department of the State Museum of Political History of Russia "Gorokhovaya, 2. History of the political police and state security agencies of Russia. XIX-XX centuries." is located in a mansion built at the end of the XVIII century. designed by architect J. Quarenghi for the president of the Medical College, Baron I. F. Fitingoff. After the sale of the building to the treasury in 1804, the Provincial Government Chambers were located here.

Since the middle of the 19th century, the building housed the bodies that ensured order and security of the capital of the Russian Empire – the Metropolitan City Administration, the Department for the Protection of Public Order and Tranquility in St. Petersburg and the Provincial Gendarmerie Department. Such luminaries of the political investigation department of pre-revolutionary Russia as G. Sudeikin, V. Piramidov and P. Rachkovsky worked in this building.

From the 70s of the 19th century until February 1917, representatives of various oppositional revolutionary movements were brought to the pre-trial detention cells at Gorokhovaya 2. A. Solovyov, N. Rysakov, Y. Martov, V. Lenin, F. Dan and many others visited here; and since December 1917, V. Kokovtsev, A. Vyrubova, A. Blok, K. Petrov-Vodkin, sailors of the rebellious Kronstadt.

From December 1917 to March 1918, the All–Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage (CHEKA), the first state security agency, was established on December 7 (20), 1917. After the transfer of the capital of Soviet Russia to Moscow and the relocation of Soviet government bodies there, including the Cheka, the building housed the first local Cheka, the Petrograd CHEKA, from March 1918. The Petrograd Chekists worked at Gorokhovaya 2 until 1932. After the completion of the construction of a Large House, the Chekists took up residence in a building specially erected for them on Liteyny Prospekt.

The first office of the Chairman of the Cheka-OGPU, F. E. Dzerzhinsky, is a striking exhibit component of the Gorokhovaya 2 department. In the early 1970s, the museum staff and Leningrad restorers recreated its historical interior, restored damask wallpaper, chandeliers, furniture made at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. Since 1975, the office has been open to visitors as a memorial.

Today, the permanent exhibition of the department tells about the history of the political police of the Russian Empire and the Soviet secret services in 1917-1953. It is complemented by the department's exhibition projects, which highlight the activities of the Russian special services, their place and role in the political system of society.