Chernomyrdin’s personal library and archive

In addition to being part of the exhibition, the library in the Chernomyrdin Museum also serves as a workspace.

The exhibition “Chernomyrdin’s ‘Quiet Don’” tells the story of how the original manuscript of Mikhail Sholokhov’s novel “The Quiet Don” was acquired and researched. For many years it had been thought that the manuscript was lost. Thanks to Chernomyrdin’s support it was purchased from descendants of one of Sholokhov’s wartime friends and donated to the Institute of World Literature. The exhibition contains facsimile editions of the first two volumes of “The Quiet Don”, with illustrations by Yuri Rebrov, gifted by the artist to Chernomyrdin in memory of their joint work on this publishing project.

The library also contains a photographic exhibition “Chernomyrdin and the book”, as well as books with dedicatory inscriptions that Chernomyrdin gave to various people including Nursultan Nazarbaev (former President of Kazakhstan), Leonid Kuchma (former President of Ukraine), Boris Nemtsov (liberal politician), Zhores Alferov (Nobel laureate physicist and politician) and Mstislav Rostropovich (world renowned cellist and conductor). This exhibition is regularly updated, as the library collection holds more than 400 books with dedications from Chernomyrdin.

The library shelves hold 1,447 books and 165 journals that belonged to Chernomyrdin.

The library storage room contains the archive of the socio-political movement “Our home is Russia”.