The State Museum of the Political History of Russia is a successor of the State Museum of Revolution which was created on October 9, 1919, after the decree of Petrograd Soviet of Workers and the Red Army Deputies. Among the initiators of the Museum foundation there were prominent figures of the Bolshevik Party and narodnik movement (populism), and representatives of intelligentsia, one of them being Maxim Gorky. The official ceremony of opening took place on January 11, 1920, in the halls of the ground and first floors of the Winter Palace.

The State Museum of Revolution was the first museum in the country which was engaged in historical and revolutionary problems. By the mid-1920s it had a unique collection of revolutionary banners, an extremely valuable gathering of leaflets of different political parties, posters, and objects of that time. During the first 10 years the main goal was to form the collections that would demonstrate the history of class struggle in Russia and in West (from Pugatchev's rising to the beginning of the creation of socialism, from the Great French Revolution to the creation of the Communist International).

The Winter Palace was home for the State Museum of Revolution for 25 years. In 1955 the Museum got two buildings: Kshesinskaya and Brandt’s mansions.

Kshesinskaya’s mansion was built in 1904-1906 after the design of a famous architect A. von Gogen for Prima-ballerina of the Mariinsky Theatre Mathilda Kshesinskaya. This building is attractive due to its asymmetrical composition, strict elegancy, graphical definition, diversity of shapes, and a variety of decorative materials. It can be even called a model of Art Nouveau style.

The building was a witness of many important historical events. In March-July 1917 the Central and Petersburg Committees of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party and the Bosheviks’ Military Organization were situated here. The balcony of the building served as a tribune for Lenin's speech. In the present time it's re-created Lenin's study in the room of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the RSDRP.

The mansion belonging to a timber merchant Vasily Emanuilovich Brandt was constructed in 1909-1910 after the design of Roman Fyodorovich Meltzer, an outstanding Petersburg artist and architect of the late 19th-early 20th centuries. It represents a sort of interaction between different architectural styles of the beginning of the 20th century – Neoclassicism, Art Nouveau, and Symbolism (this style is represented by relief images which decorate the building).

The owners of the two mansions had to flea not only from their apartments, but also from the country.

In 1955-1957 these two buildings were joined (architect N. Nadezhin), and now they make up a complex where the State Museum of Revolution had been situated till November 5, 1957, when the Museum was transformed into the State Museum of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

Presently the State Museum of Political History of Russia is one of few museums which carry out documentation and expositional demonstration of processes taking place in political, economic, and social life of Russian society in the 19th-21st centuries.