The Gulag History Museum in Moscow closed its doors “temporarily” on Thursday, November 14, 2024 due to alleged technical problems. The unexpected closure of the museum, dedicated to the history of the Soviet camps, would in reality be a political decision by the Kremlin which strives to impose a revisionist vision of Russian history.
The museum said a “fire safety violation” threatening visitors’ safety was behind its surprise closure, reported The Moscow Times. But according to The GuardianMoscow City Hall reportedly came under pressure from senior Kremlin officials and members of the Federal Security Service (the heir to the Soviet KGB) to close the museum. “We have sent inspection teams to the museum several times this year. They found no violation of fire safety rules”a Moscow government official told the Moscow Times. The decision took the management and staff of the museum by surprise, who were informed the same day of the closure of the premises.
The museum recently organized a reading of the names of the victims of Stalinist abuses (1937-1938) in October 2024. This event could explain the government’s decision, which is increasingly virulent against organizations that challenge its revisionist reading of Russian history. . Since coming to power in 1999, Vladimir Putin has refused to recognize the crimes committed by the Soviet regime, which number between 3 and 20 million people depending on the source.
The invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 strengthened the nationalist positions of the Russian autocrat and increased repressive actions against members of civil society who challenge the regime. In December 2021, the Kremlin closed Memorial, the oldest defense group for victims of Stalinist repressions, founded in 1989, which listed victims of the Great Terror on a database.
Created in 2001 by Yuri Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow, the museum is located in a large modern building in the north of the capital. Dedicated to the history and memory of the Gulag, the museum has a permanent collection with official state documents on the camps, family photographs and objects (embroidery work, camp crockery, bullets) that belonged to to families sent to the Gulag camps. The museum also includes a section dedicated to the reconstruction of the camps. The Council of Europe awarded the Museum Prize for its role in resisting the current political repression in 2021. Shows, concerts and conferences were regularly organized there.
In total, between 15 and 20 million people were interned in the Gulag camps between 1920 and 1953 and at least 1.5 million people died there. Created in 1929, the Gulag was an open-air prison, both a work camp and a deportation camp for political prisoners and all kinds of prisoners from the USSR.
Under pressure from the Kremlin, other cultural institutions have closed for similar official reasons. The Documentary Film Center in 2022 and the European University of St. Petersburg in 2008 also closed for alleged fire safety violations, reports The Moscow Times.
