Regional History and Local Lore Museum of the City of Semey

One of the oldest and largest museums of Kazakhstan, the Regional Museum of local lore of Semipalatinsk, was founded in 1883 on the initiative of political exiles-people's soldiers. At the origins of the creation of the museum stood E. P. Michaelis, as well as members of the Semipalatinsk Statistical Committee V. N. Filippov and M. I. Suvortsev. Political exiles N. I. Dolgopolov, A. A. Leontiev, P. D. Lobanovsky, A. A. Black, N. Ya. Initiatives to create a museum and a public library were supported by the chairman of the stat committee - Governor A. P. Protsenko. 

At different times, the great poet Abay, philosopher and thinker Shakarim, world-class writer Mukhtar Auezov contributed to the activities of the museum. Throughout its history, the museum has changed its location eight times. The last move took place in 1978 and to this day the Regional Museum of local lore is located in the building of the former governor-general's House. During the years of the revolution and civil conflict, the building was called the House of freedom. Here in 1917, at a meeting with the residents of the city, the leader of the Alash movement, Alikhan Bukeikhanov, made a program speech. In the same year, the first Semipalatinsk regional congress of Kazakhs was held here, at which the issue was considered and a decision was made to create autonomy. As is known from the history of the museum, the museum's collection dates back to private collections collected by political exiles and political emigrants. At the beginning of the new twentieth century - when the Semipalatinsk branch of the West Siberian branch of the Russian Geographical Society was created-there were 2,489 exhibits in the museum's funds. There were many exhibits depicting archeology (427 units), Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy (1860 units) and Ethnography (162 units), many of which date back to the early and middle ages of history. They currently constitute the museum's gold fund. The Scientific Library, which has 34 thousand volumes of rare publications, is an integral part of the museum, is a special pride of Semey residents. Rare publications are stored here: dictionaries, reference books, scientific notes, works of scientists-researchers from Russia, Central Asia and China, reports of the Semipalatinsk Statistical Committee, atlases and geographical maps, notes (Annual Scientific Publications Semipalatinsk subsection of the West Siberian branch of the Russian Geographical Society and other scientific literature. The foundation neatly stores the seams of periodicals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Today, the museum's funds contain more than 107 thousand storage units. The updated and newly created exposition of the museum is presented in six halls of the museum with the following sections: "Paleontology and geology", "nature of the native land", "Archeology and Ethnography", "history of the city and the region", "about the Alash and Alash movement", "Semipalatinsk nuclear test site. We support a world without nuclear weapons", "Semipalatinsk during the years of Independence". Exhibitions of various topics are regularly shown in the exhibition hall. The Regional Museum of local lore of Semey includes the exhibition hall "Semey during the Great Patriotic War", located in the building of the City Palace of culture, and branches of the museum in the village of Karaul, Abay district, Urdzhar district, Urdzhar district, and Ayagoz, East Kazakhstan region.