The Museum of Socialistic Way of Life

Rustem Valiakhmetov is a person who knows how to create a special place in the city that can make even the most hardened heart sentimental. The beginning of the 1990s can be considered the date of the museum’s foundation. This was a time when the long-term way of life of the Soviet man collapsed and the external attributes of life began to change. Many items began to rapidly disappear from everyday use. Rustem Valiakhmetov (now also the director of a museum in Kazan), who was engaged in photography and design, made a studio in the style of “Soviet design”, and there were more than enough details for decoration as Soviet stores got rid of stale goods. At first, it was an apartment decorated with socialist attributes, and then the basement of a residential building joined, which was also a photo-design studio, which has become an informal creative platform for artists and musicians. Then the moment came when the author and performer Andrei Makarevich, who was on the set for shooting, said: “This is not just a studio, this is a real museum!” And in support of the theme he presented real “rocker” jeans and even the very ones in which he recorded at the legendary Beatles studio “ABBEY ROAD” in London. That was the beginning. Soon many well-known Russian musicians joined the initiative (Chizh, Garik Sukachev, A. Rosenbaum, V. Butusov, V. Kipelov, E. Margulis, S. Shnurov, and the bands “Picnic”, “Aria”, and “Vopli Vidoplyasova”). Given the wide public outcry, it became possible, in partnership with the city hall of Kazan, to create a Museum of socialist life in the very center of the city; previously an underground project became open to public.

In 2017, the idea of such a sought-after museum was extrapolated to the very center of the Northern capital, at 15 Griboedov Embankment, with the joint efforts of Rustem Valiakhmetov and Boris Sergeyev, and this project, based on the feedback, was highly appreciated! The purpose of the museum is to evoke warm memories and positive emotions in people. It turned out that this museum is very interesting for young people, since the objects that surrounded their parents in their youth are now out of use. In the museum you can touch part of the exposition, play games, try on clothes, and take pictures. “Our museum is not a collection of old things; it is a museum of positive emotions!”

The museum contains objects from the 70-80s that were present in the life of almost every Soviet person. The principle of selecting a collection is special: the main thing is not the item itself, but the feeling that it carries. The most important thing in our museum is the emotions and memories of the visitor. What a person receives here, he or she already has somewhere inside his or her memory, and we only help retrieve it. And we do it in the simplest ways; being naive and primitive is our style.