Topchikhinsky District Museum of Local Lore

On May 29, 1981, the Bureau of the Topchikhinsky District Party Committee and the executive committee of the District Council adopted a resolution "On the creation of a district museum." An organizing committee was approved to carry out organizational, search, and research work. The Bureau approved the museum's thematic and exposition plan. The creation of the museum took not one day, not one month, but years. It was prompted by a public cultural need and was implemented exclusively on a voluntary basis. The editorial office of the district newspaper "Leninskaya Pravda" was instructed to cover the progress of the museum's creation. The collection of exhibits, search, and research work was decided to begin on June 1, 1981. Schools, cultural institutions, and organizations of the Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments became the strongholds in this large and responsible task. The search and research work, and the organization of exhibit collection were carried out by the leaders of local history clubs, individual local historians, including M.Y. Zakharov (the idea of an archaeological museum exposition), E.M. Vertokhvostov, K.V. Fedorova (recreation of the history of the first Soviets, the Civil War period), G.N. Nabok (work on collecting information about the Great Patriotic War period, mobilization, home front workers). The organizing committee summed up the results of the search and exposition work for the museum's creation monthly. The search work continued for two years. A room was allocated in the District House of Culture for storing the incoming funds. The first museum exhibition, dedicated to the participation of Topchikha residents in the Great Patriotic War, was also opened there.

The first director of the museum was G.N. Nabok, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, and his deputy, chief and only scientific employee, as well as the custodian of the funds, was Z.S. Yudina. What she did became a solid foundation for our district museum of local lore.