C-189 Submarine Museum

The C-189 Submarine Museum in Saint Petersburg is a unique chance to visit the inside of a real submarine that was on combat duty as part of the Russian Baltic fleet. The C-189 was laid down at the Baltic shipyard on March 31st, 1954 and launched on September 4th of the same year. It spent its entire career in the Baltic sea. In addition to combat campaigns, the C-189 took part in testing new weapons at the Ladoga lake test site. It first moved to the Ladoga test site in 1959. In 1968, on the day of the 50th anniversary of the Navy, it made a demonstration scuba diving on the Neva river, plunging in front of the Mining Institute and surfacing with the launch of flares on Board the cruiser “Kirov”, moored at the Liteyny bridge. In 1970-1972, it received the title “Excellent ship” three times. In 1977, it represented its unit at the celebration of the Navy day in Moscow. In 1978, 1979 and 1982, it was recognized as the best ship in the unit. From 1986 onward, it was placed in reserve, located in Kronstadt. After serving for almost 35 years, it was withdrawn from the fleet in 1990 and later, in 1999, sank in the merchant Harbour of the port of Kronstadt, submerged at the pier on the ground due to loss of buoyancy. Until 2005, it lay at the bottom. In 2005, at the expense of businessman and former submariner Andrey Artyushin, the submarine was raised and docked at the gunboat factory, where it was reborn. Since 2007, it has been moored at the Lieutenant Schmidt embankment in Saint Petersburg as a floating monument. After the renovation and restoration of the interior, a private Museum was created on its basis, which opened on March 18th, 2010. One of the first events held there was a solemn special cancellation of a postcard, which reproduces a painting by the marine artist A. Yu. Zaikin depicting the submarine C-189 during a naval parade.