Rjurik Lonin Museum of Veps Ethnography in Sholtozero is a museum located in
Sholtozero, in the
Republic of Karelia.
The museum was founded in 1967 by a
Veps resident of the
Sholtozero village,
sovkhoz worker
Rjurik Lonin (1930–2009), who was originally from the
Kaskez' village, likewise located in the Prionezhskiĭ District, at the southern border of the Karelian Republic.
Lonin had been interested in collecting folklore already in his early years during the
Finnish occupation of his home area in the
Second World War. Later, when he was living in
Petrozavodsk, Nikolai Bogdanov, a researcher of the Veps language in the Karelian branch of the
Soviet Academy of Sciences, in the Department of Languages, Literature and History (YALI), encouraged Lonin to collect Veps folklore.
In the 1980s, the museum was given new premises in the so-called Mel’kin House in the Mel’kamättas ('Mel’kin's Hill') neighbourhood, where it is now located. According to the home pages of the museum, this house "was built in the mid-19th century and it is a monument of Karelian wooden architecture". This house was built by Ivan Mel’kin, who was a famous stonemason, known for his work with
porphyry stone. According to Lonin, Mel’kin built the Red Bridge or the
Theater Bridge that crosses the
Griboyedov Canal, and in the past this bridge was known as "Mel’kin Bridge". The last master of the house was Ivan Vasil’yevich Mel’kin. The last noteworthy representative of this family was Nikolai Mel’kin (b. 1929), who was a prominent and long-time member of the Sholtozero Veps National Choir.
The Tuchin House, located behind the Mel’kin House, is also part of the museum. This house was originally located in the village of Kalinansar', along the road to Matfejansel’g (Matfeyeva Sel’ga), and it was moved to its present location in 1977. During the
Finnish occupation its residents were Dmitriĭ Yegorovich Tuchin and his wife Maria Mihaĭlovna Tuchina. Dmitriĭ Tuchin functioned as the village elder in the Finnish administration, but he also accommodated Soviet
partisans in his house. The novel
The Operation in the Vacuum Zone by Oleg Tikhonov tells about the activities of Dmitriĭ Tuchin during the war. An excerpt of this novel has been published in Finnish in the journal
Punalippu ('The Red Flag').
A well known resident of this house during the war was
Sylvi Paaso, a Finnish-born Soviet partisan and radio operator, who kept the Soviet troops up to date on the movements of the Finnish troops along
Lake Onega.