Лубянка

Honestly, I don't think I'm going to have time to type out my account of the Polytechnical Museum and the Pushkin Museum, but here is a small excerpt:

The Polytechnical Museum is located on Lubjanka Square, next to the FSB/KGB headquarters - there's also a huge underground prison there - possibly larger than the above ground buildings themselves. The museum is basically the only building on the square that doesn't belong to FSB, and since it was built before the revolution, it does not at all match the Soviet architecture of the other buildings. Inside are many examples of Russian technological achievements, primarily from Soviet times, but also from before the Revolution. There was also an interesting exhibit on medieval iron working. There seemed to have been a theme of centralization, which should not have been surprising, but it was interesting to see how the philosophy was applied. For instance, there was a large excavator with a 25 cubic meter bucket on it and a body the size of a small village (no joke). The idea was to dig without the necessity of intermediary transport. There was also a design for centralised lighting - one lightbulb lighting an entire factory floor by way of a series of hollow reflective tubes and mirrors. There was also the first Soviet atomic bomb, which I of course took a few pictures with.

Otherwise, it isn't worth my time to talk further about this museum or the Pushkin museum, which is full of fakes, because of the trip to the dacha.