Prokopyevsk City Local History Museum

About museum

Prokopyevsk City Local History Museum was established on August 14, 1961, based on the interschool local history museum that had been operating since 1953 at School No. 1, and since 1956 in the Pioneer Palace of the city of Prokopyevsk. Since 1964 the museum has occupied the first floor of a residential building on Shakhterov Avenue. The founder and first director of the museum was Mikhail Georgievich Yelkin, an Honored Schoolteacher of the RSFSR. The museum's exhibitions are located in the halls 'Nature of the Region', 'Archaeology', 'Ethnography', 'Revolution', 'Great Patriotic War 1941–1945', and 'Formation of the City of Prokopyevsk'. In 2012 the 'Space' hall was opened. The central exhibit of this hall is the original descent module of the Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft, which in 2010 landed after a 176-day spaceflight carrying cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov, Mikhail Kornienko, and NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson. The exhibition reflects the history of domestic and international space exploration and also contains information about the spaceflights of Prokopyevsk native Boris V. Volynov, twice Hero of the Soviet Union. It features personal belongings of B. V. Volynov, original space suits, space food and more. The museum's exhibition halls regularly present new temporary themed exhibitions from their own collections, as well as from other museums and organizations, of interest to a diverse audience.