City to Get Private Sub Museum

By Galina Stolyarova

Staff Writer

Published: August 7, 2007 (Issue # 1295)

Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times The S-189 class submarine due to be refitted as a museum stands on the Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment on Monday.

Russia’s only surviving Soviet submarine of the S-189 class, now docked at the Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment opposite the Admiral Nakhimov monument, is set to become a new private museum in the city.

Andrei Artyushin, the head of the project, said all seven compartments of the submarine will be accessible, including the torpedo room, two living compartments, the central control compartment, the emergency compartment housing the escape hatch and life-saving appliances, the electric motor room and the engine compartment.

“The living compartments will fully reproduce the real conditions back in the Soviet years and the Cold War,” Artyushin said. “There is a wealth of personal memorabilia of retired submariners: private belongings, books, photographs and paintings. The goal is to recreate the atmosphere, and let the visitors really feel it.”

The museum is privately sponsored, with the funds provided by a former submarine officer, now an entrepreneur. A team of retired submariners will look after the property and offer guided tours.

Igor Kurdin, head of the St. Petersburg Submariners’ Club, told RIA-Novosti that the museum is housed in an S-189, the last of 215 submarines of the series built in the 1950 and 1960s.

Assembled at St. Petersburg’s Baltiisky Shipyard in 1955, the submarine was in use for more than 35 years, until it sank near Kronshtadt naval base in the early 1990-s. The submarine was raised from the seabed in the fall of 2005.

Although an inauguration ceremony was held Friday, the museum will be able to welcome its first visitors only after all the necessary paperwork, including permits from the sanitary and fire inspectorates, has been completed.

“The submarine will be able to receive its first visitors in six months at the earliest, as it will be necessary to modernize the interior,” Kurdin said.

Artyushin said the submarine may eventually change its location, but will remained at its site until all preparations are completed.