Joseph Brodsky Museum

Brodsky Apartment Museum in the works in St. Petersburg.

In a joint cultural project between the city of St. Petersburg and the U.S., the apartment museum of Russian Nobel Prize winner in literature Joseph Brodsky may soon open in the city. 

The City Hall has demonstrated that it is ready to take an active role in bringing the museum dedicated to the poet to life. However, currently there have been some financial questions about the cost of doing so, and if the city has enough money in the budget to spend on such a project.

Vasily Kichedzhi, deputy governor of St. Petersburg, is nonethless eager to push the project through and has met with U.S. Consul General Bruce Turner about establishing a joint project to celebrate the poet, who emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s.

Brodsky was just as famous in the Soviet Union as he became in the states, and his life in the U.S. greatly impacted his works. 

The main issue with the deal at the moment is that the city doesn't own one of the rooms that make up the apartment, which was a communal apartment when Brodsky lived there, and often the topic of his writing. The last remaining occupant is asking 17 million rubles ($562,000) for the 44-square-meter room.

After being exiled from the Soviet Union in 1972 for social parasitism, Brodsky landed in the U.S., teaching at various universities. He won the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature for his poetry. During an interview he was asked: "You are an American citizen who is receiving a prize for Russian-language poetry. Who are you, an American or a Russian?" Brodsky answered: "I am Jewish, a Russian poet and an English essayist.

Keep your eye open for the opening of the apartment museum celebrating the life of Joseph Brodsky, who died in 1996 at the young age of 55.

08.02.2012