By RYAN DYER
Content warning: descriptions of historical torture
Downtown Moscow – on the bustling Old Arbat Street hosting gift shops full of different sized matryoshka dolls for tourists, street artists spray-painting canvases on the ground and buskers singing folk songs, is a somewhat out of place museum which is sure to attract morbid minded visitors to the country. Even if you don’t understand Russian, the axes on the yellow museum sign and a possible mime holding a sign outside should be a hint of what’s to come in the Moscow Torture Museum, or as it is formally called, the Museum of the History of Corporal Punishment.
Go down the stairs into the main museum area – which feels like a dungeon – and the museum host will greet and prepare you for the grotesque, informative, and fun tour of the items on display here – a collection of terrible torture devices, objects for the administration of corporal punishment, old engravings on the theme of executions, thematic photographs, books, and documents. The museum was opened and is operated by Valeriy Pereverzev, who also runs other independent museums in Russia. Photographs are encouraged, as well as trying out some of the devices on yourself (within reason, of course).
The museum is varied, hosting different sections of items through several rooms. A torture rack sits menacingly, awaiting a victim; turn the crank and imagine the skin coming apart at the seams on a hapless prisoner. Smaller implements of pain include screws for every finger on your hand, hanging cages, iron masks, executioner’s axes, a half cage containing a rat meant to be placed on the abdomen and heated so the rat will chew itself through the victim’s bowels, a Spanish tickler looking like Freddy Krueger’s glove, different sized whips and handcuffs and an infamous device – the pear of anguish, which would stretch out private orifices to their limits and beyond. Speaking of lower body torture, an illustration of a Judas Cradle depicts a death perhaps even more painful – sitting on a pyramid-shaped object – its only use being to stretch out an anus or vagina to grotesque extremes.
There is an area dedicated to modern capital punishment featuring paintings of executioners, and the large items found are a human cauldron, pillory, iron chair, bed of nails, and iron maiden. Visitors are encouraged to get inside the spiked maiden…but don’t come with a friend who may think it’s funny to close the door while you’re in there.
Devices from other countries are also on display such as the electric chair and the guillotine, and there is a small “sex museum” section with more X-rated items from yesteryear. Many of the items found in this darkened torture exhibit are, in fact, replicas, though when the host gleefully puts the anvil-like drunk medal around your neck, used for heavy drinkers who have acted too unruly, you won’t know to feel the difference.
Interestingly, men pay 300 rubles to get into the museum while women get a discount at 200. Children under 16 should be accompanied by parents. When you’re done at the Moscow Museum, head over to Saint Petersburg for their own version of this morbid exhibit near the Peter and Paul fortress.
To plan your own visit to the Museum of the History of Corporal Punishment, visit moscowtorturemuseum.com.
