The exhibits of the State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia are both dense and well explained, if somewhat anecdotic. Sections are devoted to the Russian-Japanese War of 1905 and the proclamation of the Russian Federation in the 1990s. Objects of daily life illustrate the changing regimes. By 1917 there was already a museum of the Revolution in this late-18C classical palace, once the headquarters of the English Club and popular with the Muscovite elite.