Surge in visitors at Lenin Museum in Tampere before closure

The Lenin Museum in Tampere is experiencing an unprecedented surge in visitors as it approaches its final days of operation. In July alone, 3,351 people visited the museum, marking the highest monthly attendance since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Museum Director Kalle Kallio revealed that similar visitor figures were last seen in the 1980s when the Soviet travel agency Inturist brought busloads of Soviet tourists to the museum. “We have never reached such numbers without Inturist’s aid. The Lenin Museum was a mandatory stop on their travel itineraries,” Kallio explained.

The impending closure has prompted many Finnish citizens to visit the museum for the first or last time. The museum will remain open until November 3, after which exhibitions will be dismantled. A new museum focusing on East-West relations, called Nootti, is slated to open in the same space in February 2025.

Kallio noted the bittersweet emotions tied to the museum’s closure, acknowledging a mixture of nostalgia and disappointment among visitors. However, he emphasized that the crowd surge does not alter the decision to close. The Lenin Museum, established by the Finland-Soviet Union Society, has been a significant cultural site for 78 years, originally known as a venue for Cold War political discussions that hosted key Soviet leaders. Since the USSR’s dissolution, it has turned into a unique cultural landmark, completely restructured in 2016 while retaining its original name.

The museum’s current name has posed challenges in securing funding, with detractors expressing concerns over historical interpretation. The Nootti museum aims to attract new audiences and foster a more inclusive community engagement in its operations, with the name change intended to clear up misunderstandings about its content.