Penza, 8 January 2015. PenzaNews. An exhibition titled “A Penza Insurance Worker. Pages of insurance history in the Penza region” opened at the Klyuchevsky museum on Thursday, January 8.

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The visitors will be able to see over 100 unique items, including the private collection of a journalist Dmitry Suetin who has been researching the history of insurance in Russia, and materials from the Penza State Museum of Local Lore, the Savitsky picture gallery, and the Klyuchevsky museum. These include books, magazines, documents, writings, portraits and company name street plaques.

According to Alexander Pleshkov, head of the Klyuchevsky museum, the exhibition will be open until the end of March.

“Why did it open at our museum? One of the reasons is that Vasily Osipovich Klychevsky witnessed many natural calamities and catastrophes since his childhood in our land. Such as a large fire that burned down half of Penza city in 1858,” he explained.

According to Alexander Pleshkov, the exhibition was opened before the birthday of Vasily Klyuchevsky which is celebrated on January 28.

In his turn, Dmitry Suetin, author of the exposition, noted that local lore researches have not done sufficient work in researching insurance craft in the area.

“I could not find any finished works: had to find everything on my own. The problem is that local archive had no funds of, erm, the Penza city society. I had very little material on the region. And stock companies formed their funds in the capital, and did not stay here,” the researcher stressed.

According to him, the exhibition is socially important as it shows the past experience that preceded that of modern insurance companies.

“Current insurance area has its roots: it did not appear only recently. It has deep history, and all that was invented before us. Only we forgot that, unfortunately. And the city society led by Victor Umnov may, perhaps, be revived in 10-20 years but on a different level since joint insurance system has great potential. It is very widespread in the West,” said Dmitry Suetin.

However, the author of the exhibition expressed doubts it will be popular.

“I have no hopes about it, since the topic is very narrow. These are not pictures that you can come and look at: you must know the field. But here very few people even grasp the basic notion of insurance, and the image of modern insurance workers is very negative. Here, the roots of Penza field and the direction – the history of Penza through insurance – is very important,” Dmitry Suetin concluded.