Sergei Kirov's desk.
Sergei Kirov’s apartment now stands as a memorial to the slain Leningrad Party Boss and as a reminder of the worst features of Stalinism.
At first though, the apartment, reconstructed to early 1930s form from photographs, seems to commemorate the early achievements of the Soviet system.
Click here for more photos from Kirov’s apartment.
Kirov’s desk is filled with reports on industrial output from factories in the Leningrad region, highlighting the impressive industrialization achieved under the first Five Year Plan and part of the second. Trinkets from these plants show off their successes—Kirov’s apartment contains the first typewriter made in the Soviet Union and models of many other industrial products, ranging from a steel bar to a tank. Photos show the construction of river dams and massive factories, and note Kirov’s inspection visits to some of these behemoths.
The explanatory text boasts of Kirov’s popularity among Leningrad workers and his closeness to other Soviet leaders. Stalin, it says, ate in Kirov’s dining room.
But Kirov’s dinner guest ultimately became his killer. And that same killer—after orchestrating Kirov’s assassination—embarked on a rampage of repression that resulted in the imprisonment and execution of millions.
The 1934 assassination of Kirov, likely on Josef Stalin’s orders, is generally considered to have signaled the beginning of these purges. During the purge period, several million people were killed (estimates vary widely, but many sources cite NKVD records stating that about 700,000 were executed in 1937-38 alone, at the height of the purges) and millions more were sent to labor camps, called gulags, where some died from starvation, disease, or cold.
I’ve written before about the conflict over Stalin’s legacy, which owes to the fact that the same Soviet leader who executed so many of his own also led his country to victory in the Second World War. But Kirov’s apartment is ultimately a memorial—not a monument—for a system that executed its most promising leaders and struck fear into the hearts of its citizens.
Zachary Tracer 
Kirov: “I use antlers in all of my de-cor-aaa-ting” (from Beauty and the Beast…)
Lenin: “All my walls need is a map to plot the spread of world communism.”
Neither decorating scheme is particularly hospitable.
So Russian is like English, making little sense to the uninitiated. I hope you learned enough to crack a few jokes and keep yourself out of trouble. I was surprised at the large number of remaining Orthodox religious buildings remaining.
I envy your ability to take crystal clear pictures of the churches and monasteries.
At the Kirov apartment you were thrown up to the paranoia that almost always develops in absolute rulers, because, indeed others seek his or her powers. They operate by intimidation and to make sure everyone gets it they kill lots of people.
A great novel about dictatorship is the Feast of the Goat by Vargas Lhosa, describing the end of the regime of Batista in the Dominican Republic.