The First Two Directors of the Anti-Religious Museum in the St. Isaac’s Cathedral: Traectory of Lives Before, During and After Cultural Revolution

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In this article, the authors attempt to reconstruct the biographies of the two first directors of the Leningrad State Anti-Religious Museum, opened in 1931 in St Isaac’s Cathedral in Leningrad. The data presented in this paper is, on the one hand, important for a better understanding of one of the understudied subjects in the history of the museum. It allows one to contextualise this story more accurately within the larger history of the epoch. On the other hand, it also has a broader scholarly significance. A museum is not only a keeper of artefacts of past culture, but also an individual artefact of its own culture. Analysing its history allows one to understand better the circumstances of the place and time of its functioning. The article draws on materials from several St. Petersburg archives, namely the Central State Historical Archive of St. Petersburg, the Central State Archive of St. Petersburg, the Central State Archive of Historical and Political Documents of St. Petersburg, the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg, and the Scientific Archive of the Russian Academy of Arts. Almost all of them are introduced into the academic circuit for the first time. The authors show that for both Lev Finn and Sergei Terekhov their work in the museum was a rather brief episode of their professional life. The article attempts to reconstruct their careers. An attempt is made to explain their trajectory.