The strongest wish and concern of Varvara Pushkina (1855-1935) after her husband Grigiry’s (1835-1905) death was to preserve the present poet A. Pushkin’s relics, and to turn the house of the Markuchiai estate into a centre of cherishing the poet’s memory in Vilnius. She expressed such a will in her testament executed in the year 1935 that became a pretext of establishing the museum. In the testament, she demised the central farmstead of the Markuchiai estate with its entire inventory to a trusteeship of the Vilnius Russian society and charged the Society to establish and run A. Pushkin’s museum at the farmstead. Since the whole Markuchiai estate, including the part left to the Vilnius Russian society, was already wallowing in debts even when V. Pushkina was still alive, the executor of the testament was obliged to liquidate indebtedness by selling the remaining parts of the estate and to hand over the part of the estate left to the the Vilnius Russian society to its ownership without any liabilities.
After Markuchiai owner Varvara Pushkin’s death in 1935, Vladimir Nazimov the testament executor, started carrying out the will: solving questions of settling debts and ensuring appearance of other conditions, stipulated by the testator for the establishment of the museum at the central estate house.
However, V.Nazimov had not succeeded in fulfilling the part of Varvara Pushkin’s testament, by which he was entrusted to liquidate the whole Markuchiai estate, to pay off debts and to hand over the bequeathed by the will part to the Vilnius Russian society for the establishment of the museum: a state system and forms of ownership in Lithuania changed, organisations, that were acting till that time terminated their activities - among them the Vilnius Russian society, most of its members were arrested and deported or imprisoned. Landed estates in Lithuania, the Markuchiai estate including, were nationalised. Later the questions of immortalising the memory of A. Pushkin in Vilnius took over under its care a government of the formed Lithuanian SSR that in the fourth decade established a museum in memory of the poet. In 1940-1949, the museum worked as one of Culture and Education institutions at the Council of Ministers of the Lithuanian SSR, in 1949-1955, it belonged to Lithuanian SSR Science Academy, in 1955-1984 - to the Ministry of Culture of the Lithuanian SSR. In 1984-1986, the museum, for a period of major repairs was attached to the Culture Administration of the Vilnius City Executive Committee, later, in the yeas 1986-1990, it was reorganised into a sub-unit of Vilnius writers’ memorial museum. From the year 1990, the museum is an independent culture institution of Vilnius Municipality.
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