Map “Geographical distribution of Russians by the early XX century»

On the map of the Russian Empire in the early XX century special tap lights mark the territories of dense Russians’ settlement in the East European Plain and also the areas of their inhabitance in other regions among different peoples of Russia. The Russian ethnicity was forming in the Volga-Oka interfluve in XIII-XVI centuries. It is extremely diverse but constitutes one people, for it has common cultural base, common language and common self-identity. The permanent exhibitions display the layer of folk culture that survived up to the XX century, therefore, one can see here not only the artifacts  of  the late XIX-early XX centuries, but also ones of earlier times.