In the center of Moscow, on Gorky Street, in an old mansion of the XVIII century. one of the largest museums in our country, which is very popular with Soviet people, is located-the Central Order of Lenin and Order of the October Revolution Museum of the Revolution of the USSR. This is a museum of the history of the epoch opened by Great October; a museum of the history of the construction of developed socialism and communism in our country. In 1922, in commemoration of the 5th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, a temporary exhibition dedicated to this date was opened in the premises of the former English Club-the house visited by A. S. Pushkin, A. S. Griboyedov, P. Ya. Chaadaev, and L. N. Tolstoy. In 1923, based on the materials of the exhibition, the permanent Historical and Revolutionary Museum of Moscow began to work, and on May 9, 1924, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR decided to take it under its jurisdiction and name it the State Museum of the Revolution of the USSR 1 . Since 1968, the museum in connection with giving it

1 Central Museum of the Revolution of the USSR, Scientific Archive, 807.

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The function of the All-Union Museum scientific and methodological center for the history of Soviet society was renamed the Central Museum of the Revolution of the USSR 2 .

Currently, the museum's exposition includes the rarest documents, photographs, clothing and art monuments, and in total more than 20 thousand exhibits. It contains six historical sections, the first of which is devoted to the revolutionary workers ' movement in Russia from the late 90-ies of the XIX century to February 1917; the second - the preparation and victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the history of the civil war; the third presents relics, documents and materials on the construction of the foundations of socialism in the USSR; the feat of the Soviet people Materials of the fourth section of the exhibition are devoted to the restoration and further development of the national economy; the fifth section contains documents and materials from the period of developed socialism, telling about the inspired work of the Soviet people, the economic, political and social achievements of our society under the leadership of the Communist Party at the present stage. The exhibition ends with a collection of materials about the development of the world revolutionary process under the influence of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the construction of socialism and communism in the USSR.

The exhibits displayed in the halls of the museum, at its periodic and mobile thematic exhibitions are only a small part of the constantly replenishing funds. In the Central Museum of the Revolution of the USSR, about 1 million documents, materials, photographs, physical evidence and cultural monuments from all periods of the history of Soviet society are stored, in museum and scientific circulation. Scientific collecting and description of museum collections is one of the most important forms of work of the museum staff. Thanks to her, the museum has developed and continues to develop valuable and representative collections: documentary stock (more than 600 thousand items), clothing stock (more than 900 thousand items) and fine art (more than 100 thousand items). Every year, the museum receives from 10 to 20 thousand new materials, documents, things,etc. cultural monuments. The main amount of receipts is the result of the research work of the museum staff, which organizes expeditions to study, select and organize museum material. Only during the years of the 9th five-year plan, the museum's scientific staff conducted 119 expeditions and business trips for this purpose.

The documents and materials in the museum's collections are the most valuable sources on the history of the socialist revolution, the construction of socialism and communism in the USSR. Only for the period of Great October, the intervention and the civil War, the museum's documentary collection includes about 50 thousand items of storage, which reveal the unprecedented scope and practical results of the activities of our party in the days of preparation and victory of Great October, the history of the revolutionary feat of the masses who made the socialist revolution and defended its The central place among these materials is occupied by the leaflets of the Great October 3, published by the Central Committee of the RSDLP and local party organizations.

The Museum of the Revolution, of course, does not contain all the leaflets that were issued in huge numbers in large and small cities, in military garrisons and the Active army, in rural areas during the October days. However, the museum's collections have one of the most representative collections of this type of sources: there are more than 500 leaflets, including 183 related to the period of preparation of the socialist revolution and more than 300 reflecting the events of the revolution and the first actions of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government to consolidate proletarian power.

A significant part of the leaflets concerning the preparation of Great October belong to various organizations of the RSDLP. Among them are the manifesto of the RSDLP, published by the VI Congress of the Party, leaflets of the Central Committee, Petrograd and Moscow Party organizations, the Moscow Regional Bureau of the party, which headed the RA-

2 Over the years of its existence, the museum has been visited by more than 40 million Soviet citizens and visitors from abroad. Today, about 900 thousand people visit the museum every year.

3 " Leaflets of the Great October (March 1917-June 1918)". Catalog (from the collection of the Museum of the Revolution of the USSR), Moscow, 1975.

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botu Bolsheviks of a number of provinces of the Central Industrial region of Russia, party organizations of other districts and cities of the country. The leaflets expose the predatory nature of the First World War, show the incalculable disasters that the war brought to peoples. Characteristic in this respect is the appeal of the Central Committee of the RSDLP to the soldiers of the belligerent countries: "Fellow soldiers! We are all exhausted by the terrible war that has claimed millions of lives. " 4 On the back of the leaflet, the same text is typed in German. In proclamations issued on the eve of October 25, 1917, the Bolsheviks denounced the anti-popular policies of the Cadets, Social Revolutionaries, and Mensheviks, and called for the overthrow of the Provisional Government.

As a source, the leaflets published after the victory of the October Armed Uprising and the establishment of Soviet power are of great importance. They vividly reflect the role of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which proclaimed the power of the workers and peasants, the Petrograd and Moscow Military Revolutionary Committees, and other organs of the proletarian revolution. The Bolshevik proclamations announced the victory of the Great October Revolution in a graphic and concise manner, and fervently called for its support, for the struggle for universal democratic peace. They called workers and peasants to defend the socialist Fatherland and the gains of the revolution, declared merciless war on counter-revolutionaries, speculators and looters, and reported on measures to combat devastation and famine. Here is one of the leaflets of the Petrograd Committee of Revolutionary Defense, published in the anxious days of February 1918: "Comrades workers and soldiers! The final and decisive hour struck. White Guard gangs Gen. Hoffmann and Wilhelm, despite the telegram sent in the morning about agreeing to peace, continue to move quickly along the railway. Just received information about the fall of Pskov, located at a distance of 8 hours from the capital. We cannot know exactly what the enemy's intention is: perhaps they will confine themselves to Pskov, but it is possible that the German advance is being led by a Russian and international counter-revolution determined to crush Petrograd.

Fellow workers and soldiers! The revolution, Soviet power, and the capital are in the greatest danger. You overthrew the autocratic executioners, destroyed the Kerenskys, Kaledins, and Dutovs. Show the German Kaledin gangs the strength and determination of the revolutionary and proletarian resistance. All for protection. All to arms. Merge immediately into the Red Socialist Battalions and go win or die! The revolution is in danger. Long live the Revolution! Long live Socialism!"5 .

Other documents and materials from the October period, including numerous decisions and orders of the revolutionary authorities, telegrams, notes, bulletins and other official documents of central and local authorities, are of great interest to historians. Here, for example, is the appeal of the military organization attached to the St. Petersburg Committee of the R. S. D. L. P. to the Kronstadt Committee of the party with a request to send to the disposal of the military organization "as many of the most persistent agitators from Comrade Matrosov as possible, so that they can be detained here as long as necessary. You will have to work among the troops of the Petrograd garrison." It is dated May 6, 19176 . In the museum there is a signed one at 7 o'clock. October 25 telegram No. 5632 from the Chief of Staff of the Petrograd garrison to all commandants and railway station managers, according to which trains with troops marching from the front to Petrograd were required to be sent out of turn, and if necessary even to stop passenger traffic. And then there was the telegram of the Military Revolutionary Committee No. 1024, sent later, at 18 o'clock, and ordering "telegram No. 5632 from Petrograd to be considered invalid." 7
Several handwritten bulletins of the RSDLP Central Committee published during the most intense days of the revolution are also valuable for researchers. One of them (No. 1 of October 29, 1917) states:: "In view of the fact that newspapers do not reach and telegrams are not transmitted, the Central Committee decided to send out short bulletins on the state of affairs to inform them." 8 These materials were written in hot pursuit, and they contain a lot of interesting data.-

4 The leaflet was written by V. I. Lenin (see V. I. Lenin. PSS. vol. 31, pp. 293-296). A copy of the leaflet is kept in the DEM of the USSR; see the Main Inventory Book of the Museum, 12699/29, ll. 111-11B.

5 Ibid., 3693/368, ll. 112-20Z.

6 Ibid., 3551/15, d. 111-11a.

7 Ibid., 10193/8, 9, D112-2Ab.

8 Ibid., 13446/3, A112-11C.

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new ones. The museum also contains several letters of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, sent directly to party organizations during the revolution and containing information about current events .9 The situation of the November days of 1917 in Moscow can be seen from the letter of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Zamoskvoretsky district to the Central Headquarters of the Red Guard on November 5, 1917: The Central Headquarters asks about the ownership of armored cars that appeared at the Arena. The answer was brief: "The armored cars are ours. An armored train arrived from St. Petersburg. Brought 4,000 reinforcements. Armored cars will be guarded in the Arena " 10 .

During the revolution, urgent and decisive measures were needed to consolidate the victory and protect the young Soviet Republic. October 27, 1917 The Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee asked the Moscow Soviet of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies "to release from the Moscow arsenal of weapons to comrade delegates of the Grozny Land Committee and the Soviet of Peasants' Deputies Ivan Yakovlevich Litvin and Philip Ermolaevich Zakharov one thousand five hundred (1,500) berdan guns, three hundred (300) revolvers, and twenty-five (25) Winchester rifles and ammunition for nim in the amount of two hundred (200) for each weapon. All the above-mentioned weapons are necessary for the self-protection of the population of Grozny, Terek region " 11 .

Among the unique sources on the history of Great October are personal records of direct participants in the events, made by them in the fall of 1917. Among them is a pocket notebook of the delegate of the II All-Russian Congress of Soviets D. G. Morozov 12 . Its entries were made shortly after the October Armed Uprising in Petrograd, in early November 1917. The author made cursory notes on the pages of his notebook about the Congress of Soviets and the situation outside it. The following lines are characteristic: "The Chairman of the assembly points out that the power of the capitalists and landlords could not fulfill the tasks set by the revolution. Transfer (power-F. K.) to the workers and peasants " 13 . The document provides an opportunity to get into the spirit of the revolution, the complexity of the tasks it solves, and the atmosphere of the class struggle of those days. The narrative nature of the notes in the notebook is interrupted, for example, by the following lines: "Shipov sat for several hours in Smolny and began to speak a different language."14
Such evidence from the scene, especially during the preparation and conduct of the Great October Socialist Revolution, has been preserved relatively little, and most of them have already been put into scientific circulation. They are supplemented by other important sources-memoirs of veterans of the revolution. Of great interest are various certificates, mandates, instructions to individual officials stored in the funds and presented in the exposition and exhibitions of the Museum of the Revolution. So, after the victory of the armed insurrection in Petrograd, on November 9, 1917, D. G. Morozov was sent to the front with the following certificate: "Given to Comrade. Morozov is accused of being delegated to the Active Army to inform its units about the coup that took place. It is the duty of the comrades to ensure with all the strength of this section the power and might of the new Soviet Government. The regiment and committees must take all local power into their own hands, remove the counter-revolutionary command staff, and re-elect the army institutions where they have not been re-elected. To maintain revolutionary order and discipline and communication with Petrograd. Immediately take the initiative to conclude a truce with the enemy. Moreover, the approval of this armistice should belong to the Council of People's Commissars in Petrograd. " 15
Some of these documents are extremely concise, such as the decree signed by N. I. Podvoysky, issued in the form of a certificate on November 2, 1917: "The Military Revolutionary Committee decided to appoint Comrade I. S. Weger as one of the commissars of the detachment sent to Moscow"16. Individual ID cards are similar in content to a short protocol of events. Thus, in January 1918, the Borisoglebsky Uyezd Council of Peasant Deputies of Tambov Province issued the following document to D. F. Popov: "Certificate. Present it-

9 Ibid., 11788/27, 29, D111-11C.

10 Ibid., 11788/110, D112-2Bb.

11 Ibid., 11800/23, D112-2AZH.

12 Ibid., 37195/158, D112-20Ga.

13 Ibid., l. 3.

14 Ibid., l. 7.

15 Ibid., 36754/4, D112-11O.

16 Ibid., 33480/3, D112-2Ab.

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Prior to this, Dmitri Fyodorovich Popov actually made a report on the current situation at the meeting of the Peasant Congress on January 2-3 on the Soviet government and the Constituent Assembly. The question of the power of the Soviets passed by a majority of 21 to 17. " 17
The personal collections of prominent figures of the Communist Party and the Soviet State, professional revolutionaries, revolutionary veterans and civil war heroes are of particular importance for researchers of the history of October and the Civil War. These funds contain a lot of both original materials and copies: personal documents and things, photos, albums, books, leaflets, various kinds of announcements, individual notes and notes from the place of events, posters, etc. Materials of A. A. Andreev, N. E. Bauman, K. E. Voroshilov, F. E. Dzerzhinskiy, N. K. Krupskaya, G. K. Ordzhonikidze, G. I. Petrovsky, Ya. M. Sverdlov, E. D. Stasova, M. V. Frunze and others are allocated to separate collections in the Museum of the Revolution of the USSR. Of great value are the letters of revolutionaries from prison and exile to their relatives and friends, in particular the letters of Y. M. Sverdlov. Separate collections contain documents and materials of Civil War heroes G. I. Kotovsky, V. I. Chapaev, N. A. Shchors, A. Ya. Parkhomenko, A. G. Zheleznyakov, materials of political workers of the Red Army.

An extensive group of documents shows the influence of October on the development of the world revolutionary process. The museum stores and exhibits leaflets, documents, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and other materials from 111 countries on the history of the international communist and labor movement. Particularly impressive are the documents and materials that reveal the rise of the revolutionary working-class movement under the influence of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the support of the working masses for the first country of socialism in the world. Here is an extensive set of materials about internationalists in the ranks of the Red Army, who defended the Soviet Republic with weapons in their hands. The museum contains a lot of materials describing the international movement " Hands off Soviet Russia!", international aid to the starving in Soviet Russia, and the revolutionary actions of the working masses in the countries of capital.

A large set of documents, photographs, publications, posters and other materials on the history of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 is unique. The museum's collections include publications of the Communist Party of Hungary-the pamphlet "What is the Soviet Republic?" 18, as well as documents illegally sent from Budapest to Moscow telling about the first activities of the young republic 19 . The museum carefully preserves the suicide letter of Arpad Kerekes (Kon), one of the heroes of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, who was executed on December 29, 1919,20

Photos occupy an important place among historical sources. They not only directly record historical events at the moment of their fulfillment, which, of course, reinforces their authenticity, but also convey an external flavor, allow you to document the time and place of action. This collection of the museum has hundreds of thousands of photographic documents. They are presented either directly in photographs, or in the form of negatives, the number of which in the museum exceeded 100 thousand units 21 . The fate of these photographs is different: some of them were obtained from photojournalists, others-from direct participants in the events, and others-as a result of scientific expeditions. But all of them have passed the expert examination and are not only the primary illustrative material at the museum's expositions and exhibitions, but also an important source for researchers. Photo portraits of heroes of the revolution and Civil War are of great interest, including for historians of October. The museum's photo chronicle of Great October is constantly updated. Recently received photographic materials from relatives of the family of E. A. Rakhya, a photo of a rally organized by employees of the propaganda train of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee "Soviet Caucasus" in August-September 1920 in the Dagestan village of Dargeli, etc. The museum became the owner of a rare collection of photographs and negatives made by M. I. Abrosimov, who lived in Omsk and Tomsk and captured political events in these cities in 1914-1918.

17 Ibid., 31574/8, D112-5Bd.

18 Ibid., 30213/175, B-41, 3-11T.

19 Ibid., 32489/30, 25D-41, 3-11j.

20 Ibid., 18219/1, D-41, 3-19.

21 All the main original photographs of the documentary fund have negatives attached to them.

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Photos are provided with short annotations, which significantly increases their informative value.

Specific historical sources include phonorecords. They convey to us the living voices of the participants of the revolution, their assessment of historical events. The history of the revolution gets in them in the true sense of the word a lively sound.

Interesting materials for historians are collected in the scientific library of the Central Museum of the Revolution of the USSR. It was founded in 1924. The most valuable part of the museum library is the "Geneva Foundation": books that belonged to the Central Geneva Archive of the RSDLP, organized in 1903-1904. The archive's library accumulated party literature, including books and materials from local party organizations. All these documents were transferred to the Museum of the Revolution in 1926-1927. Later, the library was expanded with the collection of the Russian revolutionary press of 1857-1915, which contained the first editions of Lenin's works "The Economic Content of Narodism and Criticism of It in G. Struve's Book" and "The Development of Capitalism in Russia".22 . In 1928, the library received periodicals in Russian and foreign languages from the exhibition of the international Communist press, which was open to participants of the VI Congress of the Communist International. The museum houses the personal libraries of G. K. Ordzhonikidze, V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, E. M. Yaroslavsky, G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, E. D. Stasova, V. P. Antonov-Saratovsky and other prominent figures of the Communist Party and the Soviet State.

The Central Museum of the Revolution of the USSR has unique evidence not only of the Great October era. In its other collections, the researcher will find many sources on the history of the construction of socialism and communism in the USSR. Some of these documents and materials are constantly put into scientific circulation (the museum's funds employ 2-3 thousand specialists annually), many of them are still waiting to be processed and published. A significant activity in this regard is carried out by the museum's staff, who are currently developing a comprehensive theme "The leading role of the CPSU in the preparation and conduct of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the construction of socialism and communism in the USSR and its propaganda by museum means". In 1976-1977 alone, the scientific staff of the museum prepared more than 76 kilos of products, including numerous articles published in magazines and newspapers, two issues of works were published, in particular the collection "The Museum in the conditions of developed Socialism". The collection "Museum Business in the USSR" is regularly published, scientific catalogues of museum holdings, methodological recommendations on exposition, exhibition, and stock work for the country's museums and other materials are published.

22 See "Rare editions of the works of V. I. Lenin". Catalog. Central Order of Lenin Museum of the USSR Revolution. Chisinau. 1970, pp. 5-14.

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