Stuffy political history

An ordinary Wednesday. Tired.

On the way home from work we paid a short visit to the Tampere Lenin Museum. I have never ever visited the place. In the morning paper they wrote that the museum is going to move to Vapriikki museum centre and the current location will close its doors at the end of this week. Since I have the Museum Card (free entry to almost all museums in Finland with a 54 eur card) it was easy to drop by.

There was a presentation going on about someone's trips to Siperia. The museum was quite small and full of black and white documents and photos with small texts. The air was stuffy and it felt a bit oppressive, so we didn't stay long.

The opening of the museum took place on 20th of January in 1946, a day before the anniversary of Lenin’s death. The Lenin Museum of Tampere was the first of its kind outside the Soviet Union. Unlike other Lenin Museums it was not operated by a communist party. The museum has a permanent exhibition with material related to Lenin's life and the history of the Soviet Union.

There are only two leaders of the Soviet Union who have never visited the Lenin Museum in Tampere or one of its branches. It is also worth mentioning that cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man to have travelled into outer space, also paid the Lenin Museum a visit.


The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 which also lead to the closure of most of the Lenin Museums. When the Central Lenin Museum in Moscow was shut down in 1993 the Lenin Museum in Tampere became the only still operating Lenin Museum in the world. It continued to uphold and research the period of the Soviet era. Since the collapse, the museum has developed a more critical view to Lenin's work and the Soviet Union.


+17°C, cloudy and rainy