Lev Gumilev was a Soviet historian and anthropologist and the son of poets Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova. His father was arrested and executed by the Cheka in 1921 and Lev spent many years as an inmate of the Gulag. After the death of Stalin, Gumilev was released and started working at the Hermitage and began studying the people of the Caucasus, especially the ancient Khazar tribe. Gumilev went on to introduce a controversial concept known as the 'passionarity' of ethnic groups, which, in very simple terms, states that all ethnic groups' level of passion rises and falls and the fate of the group is tied to this level of passion. In 2002 this museum was opened in the small apartment where the historian spent the last years of his life. In 2004 it became a branch of the Anna Akhmatova Museum in the Fountain House.