Exhibition 'Decembrists in Kurgan'

About exhibition

The museum building is an object of federal cultural heritage, an architectural monument dating from the late 18th century. From 1833 to 1837 the Decembrist M. M. Naryshkin lived in this house with his family. Mikhail Mikhailovich Naryshkin, a colonel of the Tarutin Infantry Regiment, belonged to a noble and wealthy family. After the uprising on Senate Square was suppressed he was sentenced to hard labor, and in March 1833 he arrived at his place of exile in Kurgan with his wife Elizaveta Petrovna, who shared his fate. The house in which the family settled was one of the largest and most affluent houses in the provincial town. Exiled Decembrists gathered here and musical evenings were held. After the Naryshkins left for the Caucasus, the building housed the county court; in Soviet times it served as a Pioneer club, a library, and medical courses. After restoration the house preserved not only its exterior appearance but also its interior layout. The museum's exhibition contains more than 600 authentic items of 19th-century aristocratic domestic life. The museum holds materials on 13 Decembrists who were in exile in Kurgan from 1830 to 1857.