MUSEUM OF ETHNOGRAPHY

One of the less-crowded museums, the Museum of Ethnography covers the various peoples of the former USSR. Founded at the end of the 19th century as a branch of the Russian Museum, for years it propogandized the friendship between the ethnic groups that made up the USSR with special emphasis on how happy various nomadic tribes were when Russians freed them from tsarist oppression and brought them things like schools, hospitals, and socialism. Now the exhibition turns the clock back a bit and shows through folk art, national dress, and various farming and craft paraphernalia how these same peoples managed to live for hundreds or thousands of years without lifting a finger to help the international proletariat.

The main exhibition is spread out over two floors in rooms to the left and right of the main entry hall. The fifteen former republics are covered in the wing to the right, and to the left are several rooms featuring artifacts from the St. Petersburg region as well as rooms dedicated to non-Russian peoples from the Russian Federation. Some parts of the exhibition are only mildly interesting and get monotonous after a while (eg. Estonian beekeeping), whereas even non- anthropologists will get a kick out of such things as the intricately carved Georgian wine vessels, the re- constructed huts with dressed-up Asian mannequins, and the Far East fish-folk room (on the 2nd floor of the left hall) complete with decked out model shaman and guys who eat, wear, live in, and ski on things made almost exclusively out of fish and reindeer. The Museum of Ethnography, mimicking the Hermitage, has a special collection of gold folk jewelry and other ritzy stuff which can only be viewed on a group excursion basis. If you're without a group you'll have to come on a Saturday and get a ticket at 1:30 for a 2:00 excursion. There are also two temporary exhibition rooms: the huge hall opposite the main entry hall, and a smaller room just next to the fish- folk room. Signs outside the museum list these exhibitions.

Inzhenernaya Ulitsa 4/1. Metro: Nevsky Prospekt. Open 10:00-18:00, closed Mondays and the last Friday of the month. Tel: 210 4320.