The Gulag History Museum in Moscow, the last prominent Russian institution dedicated to preserving the memory of Josef Stalin’s labour camps, is being replaced by a new museum focused on Nazi war crimes and the “genocide of the Soviet people,” the city govt announced on Friday.
The museum stopped admitting visitors in Nov 2024, citing unspecified “fire safety violations.” Its website was replaced by a statement from the city culture department announcing the change.
President Vladimir Putin has attempted to justify the invasion of Ukraine by falsely characterising the govt in Kyiv as a continuation of the Nazi threat to Russia. While there is no doubt that citizens of the Soviet Union suffered atrocities at the hands of the Nazis, the Kremlin has long sought to downplay crimes the Union committed against its own people.
“Any reminder of the crimes of the Russian state is very inconvenient for the current authorities,” said Nikita Sokolov, a historian and editor now living in Germany.
The Gulag museum, he noted, had organised seminars and other public events focused on the brutal history of Stalin’s repressions.
Attempts to memorialise the millions imprisoned under Stalin emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but the Kremlin began dismantling them about a decade ago, after Putin returned to power.
The Gulag Museum at Perm-36, a preserved former labour camp near the central city of Perm, was reorganised around 2015, with exhibitions that emphasised things like timber production at the camp and the challenges faced by the guards.
Since Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has banned the annual ceremony commemorating the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression, when people lined up all day outside the headquarters of the secret police in Moscow to read aloud the names of the victims of Soviet repression.
