The First Post

Coming in 1996 to Washington, the museum founder, Uli Zislin,  began to create a new world of Russian culture.Thus started the "washington Museum of Russian Poetry and Music," taking up three rooms of the apartment of Uli Michailovich, where he placed 30 collections. Having visited this museum in 2005, a direct descendant of Alexander Pushkin, New Your poet and literary worker 

Alexander A. Pushkin, wrote in his journal this epigram: 

"Passion carries Uli Zislin, 

Question taunts me all the time: 

The man lives in the museum 

Where does he himself reside?"

The museum opened in Autumn 1995 and was reconstructed in 2002 and 2011. It was visited by Russian culture affeccionades from 32 cities in 21 states of America and 35 cities of 15 nations of the world, including 15 Russian cities.

The museum conducted in America a series of large and small literary and musical performances (altogether over 400, including 25 on television and radio in New York,Washington, Baltimore and Boston).

There have been over 200 publications in USA, Russia, Israel and Ukraine about the work in the archives of the Museum, covering poets Marina Tsvetaeva, her sister Anastasia and son Georgi (Mura), along with Osip Mandelshtam, Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev, Ilya Ehrenburg, L. Ozerova, N. Rubtsova, Bulat Okhudzhava, Vladimir Vysotsky and Russian language in America (among them, more than 50 about Tsvetayeva). The museum has onmany occasions been mentioned in SMI of these countries (especially in American editions). The Washington museum has a widely visited website  (www.museum.zislin.com).

The most significant exhibitions in the museum regarding Tsvetaeva are as follows: 

- Genuine autographs of Ariandna Efron and Anastasia Tsvetayeva, 

- personal accounts by Anastasia Tsvetaeva and Michael Gertschenzon, 

- original portraits of Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelshtam, Nikolai Gumilev, Anna Akhmatova, Anastasia Tsvetaeva, 

- a large collection of photographs;

- video recordings of conversations with Olga Truchaveva;

- video and audio recordings of Tsvetaeva evening in America;

- the vase "Red Ashberry" (work of Washington sculptor Lee Prayer);

- floor from the room of Marina Tsvetaeva on the Borisoglebsky Alley;

- 151 leaves of autographs of Marina Tsvetaeva from the Bachmet archive;

- copies of a graphic painting by Marina Tsvetaeva from the RGB archive;

- the first edition of Marina Tsvetaeva's prose in a separate book (New York, 1953, from the archive of E. Altshuller);

- an unpublished photo of Alexey Eisner;

- a recording by Valentina Tsvetkova of readions of Marina Tsvetaeva by Anastasia Tsvetayeva;

- a recording of a conversation by A.N. Brodelschikova, films of Tsvetaeava;

- and few more video and audio programs and recordings. 

The pride of the museum is a bronze medal from 1899, released in the memory of Pushkin's centennial, along with its gypsum copy, created in Lithuania in for 200th anniversary of the poet. It's not possible not to mention the Pushkin calendar from 1937, two books of the poems and the writings of descendant Alexander A. Pushkin, who lived in New York. Mikhail Lermontov is presented with an nonstandard graphic portrait and rare two-tome edition of his works in 1891 with illustrations by Vasnetsov, Korovin and of course Vrubel. Here the drawings are organized with an artistic depiction of the book by a professor of arts Leonid Pasternak to the poem "On the death of the poet" and play "Masquerade." In the museum there is also a catalog of the exhibition of work by L. Pasternak, which was given to the Moscow museum of Leo Tolstoy and etc.

The museum is an imitation to cultural events in USA. For example, the Tsvetaeva bonfires (there have been 16 of these bonfire-literary readings in nature) and the Tsvetaeva song festivals (2003-2004), the Russian public library (existing for more than five years), the alleys of Russian poets and composers (existing for around 10 years), the chamber concerts of Russian music and performances by Russian musicians, etc. In the museum was conceived the idea of conducting Tsvetaeva bonfires, beginning in 2002, creating a multi-pronged museum of Russian culture for the broader American public (in 2011 there is an application for its creation around Rockville, a suburb of Washington).

One of the principles, concerning the Washington museum of literature and music, which in 2012 turns 15, is making the visitors familiar with other museums and private collections dedicated to the great Russian poets. In the Washington museum are presented, along with Marina Tsvetaeva and her family, the poetical museums of Alexander Pushkin, Michail Lermontov, Anna Akhmatova, Alexander Blok, Maximillian Voloshin, Nikolai Nekrasov, Sergei Klytchkov, Sergei Yesenin, Nikolai Rubtsov, Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, Alexey Koltsov.