The Return of History: Museum, Heritage, and National Identity in Imperial Russia

Abstract

History plays a major role in the formation of nations. Museums of history, as they emerged during the long 19th century, are pivotal sites for the display of national heritage and identity. The present article considers the origins of the State Historical Museum in Moscow as a “festival of public activity” and discusses its unique civic character. Although the idea of a public museum was not new, in imperial Russia it had existed only as a figment for much of the nineteenth century, until Russian National Museum ( Russkii natsional'nyi muzei) was founded in 1872. The press represented the museum as an institution that should cultivate in its visitors pride for the country and “lay a foundation for national consciousness.” The museum's vast task—to visually represent the millennial history of the Russian state—qualified the Historical Museum as a national institution. The museum was “national” in another sense, too: it came to occupy a major place in public culture. Prepared by years of open discourse that problematized and prioritized issues of national identity in the course of which Russian society also learned the basic grammar of representation, the museum assumed a prominent place in society. Years before its opening, the Historical Museum had already become the talk of the nation. Paradoxically, unlike the popular discourse built around the museum, the institution itself did not fare well. When in 1883, eleven years after its founding, the museum finally opened its doors to the public in conjunction with Alexander III's coronation, only a fraction of the overall design was implemented. Today the newly opened State Historical Museum returns to assume the role in society that was well articulated but never realized by its progenitor: to serve as an anchor of national identity, a link between the present and the past, and a monument to a revived national tradition.