Lenin Museum in Poronin

The permanent exhibition at the Lenin Museum in Poronin, which operated from 1947 to 1990, focused on Vladimir Lenin's stay in Krakow and the Podhale region between 1912 and 1914. The museum gathered around a thousand exhibits, including documents, photocopies of Lenin's works, illustrations related to his activities in Galicia, as well as portraits of Lenin and Nadezhda Krupskaya. Between 1913 and 1914, Lenin lived in Biały Dunajec, where he frequented the inn of Paweł Guta-Mostowy and held meetings with activists of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) arriving from Russia, planning to establish a party school there. Unfortunately, the outbreak of World War I prevented these plans from being realized. In Poronin, Lenin met with local residents, organized expeditions into the Tatra Mountains, and worked while corresponding with his Russian comrades. After World War II, the communist authorities transformed the inn into a museum and erected a monument to Lenin nearby. In 1970, the underground organization Ruch planned an operation called "Poronin," aimed at setting fire to the museum and destroying the monument; however, the operation failed due to an informant. The museum was closed in 1990, and the Lenin monument was dismantled and relocated to the Lublin region. Interestingly, the statue has a hole in its shoulder as a result of its dismantling. In an architectural context, the Lenin Museum reflected the spirit of the times when Lenin was a central figure in historical transformations across Europe, and his activities in Poronin had a significant impact on the development of the labor movement.