About Pushkin House

Pushkin House, established in 1954 during the Cold War, is an independent registered charity and a dynamic arts organisation that critically explores Russian culture and provides a platform for artists and creative practitioners from Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Our exhibitions, community engagement and public programming across history, literature, music and performance focus on themes of identity, citizenship, migration, displacement and belonging. While the original endowment set up more than half a century ago ensures its independence, Pushkin House relies on ticket sales, public grants and donations to sustain our high quality programming.

Archive Exhibit

There will be an exhibit of a sample of Soviet era posters from the Pushkin House archives. The posters date from the 1960s to the 1980s and were exhibited at the cultural centre at various points in its history. The posters include themes of World War II propaganda, Thaw era reforms, May Day, and 1980s anti-drug posters. Spanning different eras of Soviet history, the small exhibit will provide an insight into Soviet propaganda and its role in Russian diaspora organisations abroad.

The exhibition is free and open to the public from 14th September until 21st September during the working hours of Pushkin House.

Guided Tours

During the Open House Festival we invite you on a guided tour around our 18th-century building as well as for a meeting with our team, who will explore the social and cultural themes of the 1960s-1980s Soviet era through the prism of the Soviet Posters Archive exhibition.

We will run two sessions on 18 September Wednesday starting at 5pm and 6pm and on 21 September Saturday at 2pm and 3pm; attendance is free and open to all, but booking is essential.

Pushkin House Bookshop & Book Fair

The Pushkin House Bookshop is an independent bookshop specialising in culture, history, politics, literature and visual arts from Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

We are organising a book fair as part of the Open House Festival, showcasing our Bookshop Manager’s top picks and our readers’ favourites over the past year; a collection focused on art and architecture especially for Open House visitors; and a special display of books to accompany the archive exhibit of Soviet posters, which will include books from the Pushkin House team’s personal libraries.

The Book Fair will be open from Tuesday, 17 – Saturday, 21 September during the working hours of Pushkin House.

Architecture

The building of Pushkin House was designed by Henry Flitcroft (1697–1769) who favoured the Palladian style, emphasising classical features of order and symmetry. His best-known commission, designed on a monumental scale, was Woburn Abbey, stately home of the Duke of Bedford. Flitcroft was much more modest in Bloomsbury; those street-front railings have a touch of class, but the panelled front door, with two narrow “attendant” windows, looks slim and spare. Again, on the first floor, two narrow lights flank the main round-headed window. The second floor has a Diocletian window, semi-circular, with two vertical mullions, continuing the tripartite theme.

Inside the house, the striking feature of the uncluttered entrance hall is the pair of classical pillars marking off the stairwell. The hall is exactly the same width as the central section of the façade. Some of the ground floor rooms have original woodwork and plaster decorations. We have more detailed information about the architecture of the House available for our visitors.