National Museum of the Republic of Bashkortostan (Ufa, Russia):

Sirotkin V. N., Senior Researcher, Bailee of the Natural History Fund, e mail: nm56@mail.ru

The National Museum of the Republic of Bashkortostan is one of the old-established national museums in Russia. It was opened in April 1864 as the Ufa Province Museum under the initiative of Ufa civil governor G. S. Aksakov (son of the famous Russian writer S. T. Aksakov) under support of the province statistical committee members. In the entire sesquicentennial history that was anything but simple, the museum had various names, addresses, emphasis of exhibit subjects, structure, personnel and, at last, departmental affiliation. The contemporary history of the museum started in 1990 when the Republic of Bashkortostan gained higher constitutional and legal status. Through the support of the authorities represented by the Republic President and the government, in the hard years of reforms when many museums were shut down and restructured, Bashkortostan re-enforced legislative and resource base of museum art, established new museums and enacted the RB law on The Museum Fund of the Republic of Bashkortostan and Museums in the Republic of Bashkortostan in 1998. The museum fund has compiled collections of archeology, documentation, numismatics, rare books, precious metals, metals, porcelain, glass, ceramics, natural history, fine arts, leathers, woods and weaponry. The Natural History Fund contains collections on zoology, botany, entomology, paleontology and geology. The geology collection is intended to display the diversity of the mineral abundance and ore wealth of the Republic of Bashkortostan. At present the geological collection of the museum contains 2638 of units. Geological samples were collected by the museum staff in 1950–1990. Many mineral samples were donated to the museum by various legal organizations and private individuals. The richest mineral collection was purchased from F. F. Chebaevsky. It is worth saying that this collection contains 344 samples of rocks, ore, minerals, paleontological remains and is the largest assemblage in the geological collection of the museum.

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