Leningrad party boss Sergei Kirov was one of the most powerful men in Russia in the early 1930s. His decidedly unproletarian apartment is now a fascinating museum showing how the Bolshevik elite really lived: take a quick journey back to the days of Soviet glory, including choice examples of 1920s technology, such as the first-ever Soviet-produced typewriter and a conspicuously noncommunist GE fridge, complete with plastic food inside.
Many of Kirov’s personal items are on display and his office from the Smolny Institute has been fully reconstructed in one of the rooms.
Kirov lived for 10 years here until his murder at Stalin’s behest in 1934, which sparked a wave of deadly repression in the country. A gory but reverential display shows the clothes he was wearing when killed. The tiny hole in the back of his cap is where he was shot (blood stains intact) and the torn seam on his jacket’s left breast is where doctors tried to revive his heart.
