There is a cozy house on a high hill near the Victory city park. The well-known Russian and Ukrainian short story writer, journalist, human rights activist and humanitarian Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko lived and worked in it from summer 1903 to December 25th, 1921. On occasion of the 75th anniversary of his birth, an exhibition “Life and Work of Korolenko” was arranged. Based on it, a literary memorial museum was established in 1940. The memorial part of the exposition was placed in the house where V. Korolenko lived for the last 18 years.

  The first director of the museum was its founder, the writer’s daughter Sofia Vladimirovna. During WWII the exhibits had been evacuated to Sverdlovsk where the museum kept working. Nazis destroyed the house of the writer before their retreat from Poltava. However, the building was restored by December 25, 1946 and the museum resumed operating.

  There is a garden outside the museum and a wing that the exhibition hall operates in.
The museum has more than 10 thousand exhibits. It contains unique photographs, autographs of Korolenko, Anton Chekhov, N. G. Chernyshevsky, I. E. Repin and others; his own belongings, books and newspapers from his personal collection etc. In particular, there are portraits of V. Korolenko made by the painter Ivan Parkhomenko (1909) in the museum.

  Here is a study of the writer. This is where his heart stopped beating at about 10.30 a.m. A double drawer desk purchased for Korolenko’s first literary fees that he used of for 36 years, a glass inkstand, 2 Karelian birch pens, a wooden couch made according to the draft by Korolenko - everything here reminds of the selfless, devoted worker, talented man, whom the fates of the people among whom he lived were near and dear to... He wrote “History of My Contemporary”, “Sorochintsi Tragedy” and other works there.

  In this building that the memorial plaque is now established on façade of Vladimir Korolenko met many famous workers of culture. People went to his place for advice, to share their grief and entrust themselves to him with their inmost thoughts. He was loved and trusted. He was concerned about needs of ordinary people, their troubles. He defended the interests of the working people.

  Over the difficult years of the Bolshevik despotism and mass repression, Korolenko advocated for domestic cultural workers, for human rights and against injustices and persecutions on the social class basis, publicly condemned the means of building the socialism in the Soviet Union, proclaimed outcry against the new epoch’s “largest becoming brutal” and against the executions, criticized both Red Terror and White Terror. He also assisted to establish orphanages, did much for starving children during the famine years.

  Poltava National Pedagogical University, the city comprehensive school No 10 and one of the streets has been named after the democrat writer and great seeker after truth.