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He researched them, collected them and was thrown in jail for them. Alfred Mirek, a music professor and author of a multitude of publications on music, is best known as perhaps the most accordion-obsessed person in the former Soviet Union: he has collected thousands of accordions and accordion-related objects in the last five decades. Once stored in his apartment, the instruments are now displayed in what Mirek claims to be the only museum in the world solely dedicated to accordions and other instruments in the accordion family.

"Just imagine, all this was stashed away for years in my three-room flat," Mirek said. "I would like to see David Copperfield pull a trick of this sort."

The collection includes 140 various accordions, concertinas, bayans and over 2,000 old records, as well as posters and photographs of famous accordion players.

Although often thought to be of German origin, Mirek claims that the accordion is really a Russian invention.

"No other country can boast such a variety," he said. In the past, every small village had its accordion maker with his own distinctive style.

According to Mirek, the accordion took off in Russia after the Czech organ master Franz Kircek first invented the instrument's predecessor — a small portable organ — and brought it to St. Petersburg in 1783 to try it in upper class salons. This evolved into an accordion (garmon or garmoshka), which was later considered by high Russian society as an instrument "for drunken coachmen and street-sweepers in love." It was only later in the 19th century that Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky brought it back upstage and introduced it to the symphonic orchestra.

"Making accordions became a full-fledged industry in the mid-19th century," Mirek said. At the time, playing accordion was a well-paid job too.

In his wacky collection Mirek has accordions with stories of their own. One allegedly rescued its owner from a pack of wolves when he found himself in the Russian steppe at night. A guy by the name of Alexander had to play all night long to keep his bloodthirsty "admirers" back.

Instruments in Mirek's collection arrive by different means; he's covered thousands of miles in his search for rare accordions. If finding the treasures wasn't enough, writing about them proved to be a more tedious task. Mirek compiled the world's first encyclopedia of accordions and a classifying chart of over 200 varieties.

His hobby is not a cheap one. He's sold personal valuables in order to purchase rare accordions. "I am under constant pressure to buy old accordions, as I know that many rare instruments and information about them will be at some point thrown away by its owners as useless trash."

Unique or not, Soviet authorities were not impressed by this one-of-a-kind collection. Leningrad prosecutors dismissed his unique collection as "useless trash" framing up a criminal case against him based on anonymous slander, a popular way in the Soviet time to get rid of talented people. The story goes that Mirek was completing his PhD in music, focusing, of course on accordions, when there came a knock on the door followed by a year in prison in 1984. His instruments were priced at zero rubles by specialists from the prosecutor's office, and so was his effort in collecting them despite it being recognized by UNESCO in 1977.

Now the accordion museum is an affiliate of the Moscow State History Museum and is open to the public. They plan to hold musical classes, festivals and concerts.

Moscow Accordion Museum

18 2nd Tverskaya-Yamskaya Ul.

Metro: Mayakovskaya