The author deals with issues related to the current situation and prospects of historical museums’ development in the Russian society as a phenomenon of social, political and cultural life. According to the author, a museum which reproduces models of the past with the help of genuine remnants of the tradition and culture serves not just preservation of the heritage but helps to a critical analysis of the social norms and values and to their authentic reproduction. This fact explains a museum’s bent for rational scientific methods of interpretation of the heritage. That is why a museum is an important vehicle to maintain the historical conscience. The collapse of the Communist ideology brought about disintegration of the Greater Russian national state tradition which crumbled into multitude of particular local archaic traditions that once had been constituent parts of the Greater tradition. The same trend caused disintegration of integral exhibition into array of different ones. The author contends that cognitive assumptions implied in a museum allow to perceive the historical process as a whole.