About the Museum

The Rumyantsev Museum evolved from the personal library and historical collection of Count Nikolay Rumyantsev (1754–1826). Its origin was in St. Petersburg in the Rumyantsev house or mansion, building number 44 on the English Embankment overlooking river Neva. After Nikolay died in 1826, his brother Sergei converted the house into a museum. It was opened to the general public in 1831, initially for one day a week, and the remaining days were for study. Maintenance difficulties were among the reasons for the shift of Rumyantsev Museum to Moscow, despite it being affiliated to the Public Library in Saint Petersburg since 1845. In 1862, Nikolay's collection was combined with others, including paintings from the Hermitage Museum, and renamed the Moscow Public Museum and Rumyantsev Museum. By 1917 there would be four name changes and the collection grew to 1.5 million items. This increased to 2.7 million in the next three years following an expropriation and nationalisation campaign. A number of notable people used the library such as Dmitri Mendeleev, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy. In 1921 the museum and library were administratively and formally separated. A second deposit copy was permitted. In 1924, weeks after the death of Lenin, despite there being some contenders for Lenin's legacy such as the Public Library in Saint Petersburg, Rumyantsev Museum was reorganized as the Lenin Library. The Rumyantsev library became a part of the Lenin Library while other holdings were dissolved among the Tretyakov Gallery, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the State Museum of Oriental Art among others. The Lenin Library would go on to become the Russian State Library in 1992.