The family Museum of Viktor and Galina Merzly

The creation of the Viktor Merzly family Museum was prompted by the desire to preserve family exhibits and to show the history of the district through the prism of family for children, relatives, and acquaintances.

That is what the Museum’s founder says: «Our country has experienced many upheavals, such as wars and revolutions. Many families were left without fathers, and children were orphaned. This could not but affect the family memory.

Our parents, who suffered from the «Stalin syndrome», told our generation little about the relatives, about the history of childbirth, their life and activities before the events of 1917, about the period of the Civil war, and collectivization and repressions.

There was a destruction of continuity between generations. Young boys and girls were separated from their families and left to build a «bright future». Being many kilometers away from home, they became detached from the family hearth. Family values were replaced by the ideology, and the continuity and traditions of families were finally lost.

We do not have enough time to talk with parents about their earlier lives, about grandparents, about family and village traditions. This either due to laziness, or from passivity or selfishness. We have come to the point where we have practically lost the culture of our ancestors.

In my museum I want to show the traditional and original culture of Pinezhya, the history of the district, and the life of my family, where the house is not only a log house, but a structure and a dwelling with all its elements. It’s also something more – it is a «human race history keeper.”

The exhibitions created in this Museum are:

Pinezha history from antiquity to the present day; the Pinezhsky house; a washstand in the everyday life of a peasant; household glassware; the history of the iron; tea party on Pinezha, spinning wheels of Pinezha citizens, patterned towels and weaving of pinion; civil war in Pinezha, etc.