Abstract: The subject of this research is activity of the section of history and everyday life of the State Russian Museum established in 1918. The department devised a new theme – history of everyday life and its visualization in museum expositions, which was natural development of the Russian historical science. Intended to preserve and actualize the history of everyday life of different social classes, it shared fate of multiple national museums of everyday life: exhibitions that tool place in the 1920s were cancelled; in the late 1930s, the collections were transferred to museums of different categories, such as the State Museum of Revolution, the State Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR. However, the section of history and everyday life did not cease to exist, and in 1941 merged into the State Hermitage Museum as an independent structural department of the history of Russian culture. Leaning on the new archival sources, an attempt was made to elucidate the work of the department of history and everyday life along with its branches in conditions of difficult political situation in the country during the 1920s – 1930s. Initially, the primary task of the department consisted procurement of the funds with the items from nationalized manor houses; later in consisted in exposition of the collection; and then due to the absence of the unified state institution for regulation of questions of preservation of historical and cultural heritage, the activity was focused on preventing scattering of the collections. After the First Museum Congress in 1930, the museums were recognized as the means of political-educational propaganda, which let to countrywide stagnation of expositional and exhibition activity of the museums. The museums of history and everyday life, being the mixed type museums, were incapable of resisting new realities, and thus re-specialized into museums of history and art or liquidated completely.