The Belov Apartment Museum

Vologda Oblast
Vologda, Oktyabrskaya str., 10, apartment 4
Phones: +7-921-126-14-23, +7-921-142-08-56
Web site: https://kirmuseum.org/ru

The museum, created almost three years after the writer's death, is a unique literary museum in the country. The exhibition consists of 4 large rooms: the living room, the writer's office, the room of his wife Olga Sergeevna and daughter Anna Vasilyevna, the auxiliary hall, the hallway, the kitchen. Each of them presents unique exhibits, including authentic items that belonged to Belov and his family.

The life and work of Vasily Belov are closely connected with the Vologda region, with the Russian North. For many years, Vasily Belov lived and worked in Vologda. The writer's apartment contains a rich library and a collection of magnificent paintings. Here is the most valuable handwritten archive of the author. There are icons in the collection of the XVIII – beginning. XXI century.; souvenir sculptures, products of folk and applied art; tableware, records. Numerous gifts, souvenirs in the interior tell about the writer's environment, individual stories of meetings. Famous writers, artists, and cultural figures visited Vasily Ivanovich in this apartment, where the cultural, social and political life of not only the city, but also the country was discussed. To this Vologda address, V. I. Belov received letters from all over Russia from famous people and just readers.

Vasily Ivanovich Belov (1932–2012) is a Russian writer and a poet. He is one of the largest representatives of Russian Village Prose. He has written many well-known essays, short stories, and novels, including An Ordinary Affair (Privichnoe delo), A Carpenter's Stories (Plotnitskiye rasskazy), Irrevocable Years (Nevozvratnye gody), The Eves (Kanuny), The Year of a Major Breakdown (God velikogo pereloma), The Sixth Hour (Chas shestyi), Everything's Ahead (Vse vperedi), Harmony. Essays on Folk Aesthetics (Lad. Ocherki o narodnoy estetike), which has been called ‘an encyclopedia of Russian peasant life’, and many other literary works.
The Belov Apartment Museum is one of the few Vologda Region literary museums, which preserves a unique memorial legacy of the famous Russian writer’s life and literary works. The museum exhibits more than a thousand original objects belonging to the writer and his family. The atmosphere of the museum and its peculiarity can yield a better understanding and appreciating of the literary works created by the great master.

The apartment museum is open only by appointment (the museum is located in a residential building).