Central Armed Forces Museum — Attraction in Meshchansky District

This museum is crammed with military equipment and artifacts inside & out. There is unfortunately no information in English apart from a 1 page handout giving you the titles of the various rooms inside the museum, hence 4 stars and not 5.

There are loads of original artifacts from Russian Imperial times up to modern day with what I assume are the stories behind them etc. but unfortunately you have to just guess from the pictures. Still it is worthwhile going just to see them.

At the rear of the building there is a park outside with all manner of tanks, jets, artillery pieces etc. If you are interested in military equipment you could easily spend 2 to 3 hours walking around.

As regards getting there, Dostoyevskaya is the nearest Metro station, when you come up to street level walk past the big white star shaped building (Central Academic Theatre of the Russian Army) leaving it on your left and the museum is about 5mins walk North. Some interesting memorial statues nearby on the same side of the street as the museum as you walk from the station.

Entrance to equipment park is downstairs at the rear of the building on the same level as the cloakroom and...

A very interesting museum with a well done English audio guide. Very impressive displays on victory in Berlin, and shooting down the U2 spy plane. The omissions in the list and displays of the battles of the armed forces are the most telling part: The missions in Ukraine during the Holodomor death years in the 1930s, the invasion of Poland by Stalin together with Hitler under the Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939, and the 1940 invasion of the Baltics, do not show up in the displays, nor do the wars against Finland. Stalin giving himself multiple highest medals is quite ironically dealt with by mentioning that the post-soviet army no longer issues highest commendations multiple times. Stalins de facto elimination and killings of the senior officer corps just before WWII is displayed in all its horror. This self-decapitation most probably led to the initial brutal losses in the war.

Nothing is mentioned about the retreat from Eastern Europe in 1990, where we should all commend the red army for leaving, too late maybe, but peacefully...

Very good collection. I would give 5 stars if our visit was not devalued by an impolite employee confronting my child in aggressive way in Russian language for taking IPhone videos. Apparently, the photos are ok but videos are not. The employee attacked my kid in offensive Russian second time for taking panoramic photos after explaining that photos - ok videos - not. Apparently, panoramic photos are not ok. I would normally expect polite warning to foreign visitors that may not read warning posters. We have also received comments from Russian visitors like STAY HOME, TOO MANY OUTSIDER COME TO MOSCOW, DO NOT ASK QUESTION - JUST OBEY WHAT YOU ARE TOLD. Our experience their completely correlated with what our Western media like BBC and CNN write about Russia and what they tell to my kids at school...