Calls from the other world, the mystical creak of floorboards, the mysterious movement of objects, a suddenly dying light, an overturned bed of a revolutionary and even the smell of cabbage pies and coffee beloved by the leader of the revolution in the air. They say that some kind of devilry is going on within the walls of the Samara House-Museum of Lenin. On the 149th birthday of Ilyich, 63. RU visited the memorial complex and learned about all the myths that envelop the building.
Bed affairs of revolutionaries
The Ulyanov family rented a six-room apartment on the second floor of a brand new mansion from the merchant Ilya Rytikov in May 1890. Here, 19-year-old Volodya, together with numerous relatives, lived for only three years - until August 1893.
The Ulyanov family occupied six rooms, an entrance hall and a kitchen in Rytikov's house.
Either the energy of this place turned out to be so attractive, or the residents of Samara too want to believe in a miracle, but for several years the townspeople have been gossiping that something is wrong in the museum.
The workers of the museum memorial complex were the first to face the otherworldly force while preparing the building for restoration in 1986.
Maya Obraztsova, head of the House-Museum of Lenin, knows every nook and cranny of the mysterious house.
- At the same time, at the methodological council, we discussed the concept of the memorial apartment. In particular, we argued about how to "settle" the young Elizarov family: Ilyich's sister Anna and her revolutionary husband Mark, - said Maya Obraztsova, head of the Lenin House-Museum, to 63. RU. - From the moment the museum was opened in 1940 and until its restoration, instead of the current sofa in Mark's room, there was an ordinary metal bed on which he supposedly slept. And in Anna's room there was her own bed, since according to Soviet ideology it was not appropriate for revolutionaries to be put to bed together.
Now the Elizarovs "live" in this bedroom.
The museum contains exactly the same plants that were in the house during the life of the Ilyich's mother. Many shoots were brought from the Ulyanovsk Lenin Museum.
And the young generation of museum workers, of course, wanted to restore justice, proposing to put a double bed in Anna Ilyinichna's room, and a sofa for relaxation in Mark Elizarov's office. The newlyweds could not sleep separately!
The passionate dispute between the museum workers ended in nothing. The historians, heated by the discussion, put the apartment on the security console and went home.
Wallpaper on the walls - an exact copy of those that were under the Ulyanovs. In 2010, the design was recreated by masters of the old school at the Saratov factory, manually applying serifs for the pattern on 9 printed rubberized rollers.
- And in the morning we saw that in Mark Timofeevich's office, on his bed, the entire bed with a mattress, blanket, pillow, sheet was rolled into a neat roll. Full feeling that the young husband was going to move into the room with his wife. It turns out that he supported our conceptual idea. On the one hand, it was pretty funny, but on the other, it was creepy. Because no one could enter here at night. The object was on alarm, and the watchmen were sitting below. All of them were trusted people, elderly, war veterans, members of the CPSU. The museum was then in the structure of the regional party committee, the entire staff was carefully checked. Nobody could cheat like that, ” Maya Obraztsova is sure.
The bed in Mark Timofeevich's office was replaced with a sofa.
Calls from the other world?
On the eve of the great restoration of the museum in the 1980s, the night watchmen sitting on the ground floor also began to notice some kind of devilry upstairs in the Ulyanovs' apartment.
Recently, a wax figure of 19-year-old Volodya Ulyanov was "settled" in the museum. By the way, in Samara, the future leader of the revolution was first called Ilyich
Before the restoration, where the Ulyanovs' kitchen is now, there was the office of the head of the House-Museum. And below it is the caretaker's room and at the same time the service room of the watchmen. The telephones below and above were paralleled. And as soon as the day employees left the museum and set the upper room on the alarm, the phone began to ring at the watchmen downstairs. It feels like someone on the second floor was dialing a number. The watchmen called the central security point, removed the alarm from the object, thinking that one of the visitors remained here. We got up, examined all the rooms, searched the closets, looked under the beds - no one. We went down, and the situation repeated itself one to one, - Obraztsova recalls.
The wax Ilyich is accompanied by his mother Maria Alexandrovna.
Wax hairstyles are made from natural hair, each hair was individually implanted.
Shoes, dress, undershirt and petticoat: the costume is completely handmade.
The next morning, employees called telephone operators to the museum. The specialists checked everything, called the line. And nothing! And at night the telephone started ringing mysteriously again.
A ghost haunting the apartment, the ghost of communism?
The restoration of the museum was completed in 1989. But the house continued to scare employees and visitors with unexplained phenomena. The caretakers on the first floor began to clearly hear footsteps, tapping and rattling.
The museum contains 250 books that the Ulyanovs held in their hands.
- The watchmen removed the alarm from the second floor, went up to the Ulyanovs' apartment, started looking for the lost visitors and found no one. And during the day, our guides discovered disorder in the exposition: either a paper knife moved on the table, or someone was shifting writing materials and books in Ilyich's room. There was even a case when the pieces on the chessboard in the bedroom where the school boys lived: Volodya's younger brother Mitya Ulyanov and Mark Elizarov's nephew Eugene were changing places. That is, in the evening we exhibited one chess study, and in the morning we discovered another, - wonder at the museum.
Do some ghosts like to play a game of chess?
And once in winter, the guides who had already left their workplaces saw a flickering candle in the kitchen window. Although the house has long been supplied with electricity and no fire hazardous items are kept at such an object by definition.
The interior of the kitchen is filled with household items from that era.
- I had to return to the museum. We run into the kitchen - the electricity is off, no candles are lit. We go out into the street and again see a candle fire in the window, - the head of the museum is perplexed.
Bringing with gourmet inclinations
When the general public became aware of the mysterious phenomena in the museum, in 2007 a film crew from Germany came to the memorial complex. Three young Berliners decided to collect material here for the film from the series "Return of the Unknown".
- They specially came to the house at the hour of the witches at night: between 00:00 and 01:00. And now we are going up the stairs of the main entrance to the second floor, when suddenly the light turns off spontaneously. Then it suddenly turns on and off again. And after a couple of seconds, the smell of baked pies with cabbage so beloved by all the Ulyanovs begins to spread throughout the house, - Maya Obraztsova shared the details of that night.
Once the Ulyanovs donated a coffee set made of Limoges porcelain to comrade Ilyich, the revolutionary Alexei Sklyarenko. In 1987, Sklyarenko's grand-niece Elena Glebova-Blagovedova donated the remains of the crockery to the museum.
Then the director of the museum thought that the night caretaker of the museum wanted to treat the visitors with pies. The film crew decided to test the hypothesis and headed down to the back office:
- We went downstairs, we go to her room, and she met us with the words: "Are you eating pies with cabbage?" That is, the smell was so strong that everyone could clearly feel it. That night, the Germans' supersensitive devices recorded a white clot flying in the air in the cold hallway in front of the stairs. Perhaps this is some kind of defect in their equipment, I don’t know, but they thought that this is something unknown that lives in this house, - says the head of the memorial complex.
Do some otherworldly forces really live within the walls of the museum?
And in 2010 Samara journalists became witnesses of the mysterious phenomenon. The writing brethren came to Lenin's house during museum week.
- According to the concept, then it was necessary to tell about some genuine subject that existed in one or another historical era. We have prepared a story about the remains of a coffee service that once belonged to the Ulyanov family. The journalists lined up in the dining-living room. I took a cup and saucer in my hands and began to talk about the history of objects, how they got to us, - says Maya Obraztsova. - And suddenly everyone began to feverishly sniff the air. It smelled like freshly brewed coffee. Either it was a massive hallucination, or something unknown and mysterious, which somehow accompanies the life of this house.
All the Ulyanovs were musically gifted people. Lenin himself studied music until he was 8 years old, sang beautifully, and possessed an excellent baritone.
In Ilyich's bed
Whether there is a poltergeist in the house or there are reasonable scientific explanations for all mysterious phenomena - the museum staff will not undertake to assert. Be that as it may, but "cohabitation" with ghosts does not interfere with workers.
Vladimir Ulyanov's room.
Apparently, the energy in the house of revolutionaries is favorable. At least, cats that are sensitive to such phenomena are regularly nailed to the Ulyanov Museum.
“One of them, named Muska, managed to get into the museum from the yard for several years in a row, gave birth to kittens and brought them directly to Ilyich’s bed,” the memorial staff smile.
By the way, the popularity of the leader of the world proletariat is still so great that employers are ready to pay 3 thousand rubles a day for working as a double of Lenin.