The Museum of Electronic Musical Socialism of Aleksandr Lebedev

The idea of creating the museum belongs to its founder, Aleksandr Lebedev. It was he who in 2009 made the fateful decision to show his collection of Soviet guitars to a wide range of guitar music lovers in our country. The first show of the collection took place in the same year (2009) as part of the annual international exhibition “Music of Moscow” in Sokolniki. It produced a bombshell effect and became traditional from 2009 to 2013. Many visitors came to the exhibition specifically to get acquainted with the history of Soviet guitars, be able to hold real Soviet guitars in their hands, and, at the very least, produce a couple of notes at the exhibition. All copies shown at the exhibitions are carefully restored with the golden hands of Aleksandr Lebedev, are working models, and are quite “playable”.

From 2014 to 2018, the collection was presented at the international exhibition “NAMM, MusikmesseFrankfurt” in the Sokolniki exhibition complex. Also, a large exhibition organized by the museum was held at the Central House of Artists on the Kuznetsk bridge. The leading guitarists of our country held workshops at the Central House of Artists: Dmitry Maloletov, Dmitry Maximov, Aleksandr Kuindzhi, Vladimir Nelyubin, and many others not announced on the poster.

The main fund of the museum is a collection of electric guitars and related musical equipment from the Soviet period, produced in all the republics of the Soviet Union and the countries of the socialist bloc (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, the Polish People’s Republic, etc.), and various paraguitar products. The main collection belongs to the founder of the museum, Aleksandr Lebedev. The museum’s collection also includes additional collections of musical and paramusical industrial equipment, media, and auxiliary products of several owners.