Russia Gulag museum gives way to Soviet war site

A Moscow museum focused on Soviet suffering in World War II has replaced the public role of the Gulag History Museum, which had documented Stalin-era repression before being shuttered in 2024.

The new site, called the Museum of Memory, is set up to commemorate the “genocide of the Soviet people”. It occupies a space once associated with exhibits on the killings and imprisonment of millions under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

The Gulag History Museum was “temporarily” closed in 2024 over alleged fire safety violations. A guide at the new museum said its exhibits had been moved to storage.

The new museum offers guided tours for small groups by prior arrangement. Its website says it welcomes “above all” veterans of the Ukraine war and their families, as well as students and schoolchildren.

Inside, visitors follow an AI-generated story of an imaginary Soviet family, the Lebedevs, through scenes of the Siege of Leningrad, Nazi concentration camps and razed villages. A guide said the family was a composite image based on several prototypes.

The museum's displays include recreations of bunks in Nazi concentration camps, the entrance to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp and figures of women and children being held at gunpoint by Nazi soldiers. Its final room is dedicated to the Nuremberg trials.

There is no comparable focus on those arrested, executed or imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag system. Up to 18 million people were imprisoned in the Gulag between the 1930s and early 1950s, and historians generally accept that at least 1.5 million died.

Critics said the closure of the original museum and the replacement exhibit risk obscuring the history of Soviet repression. Historian Maxime Novikov, who visited the new museum, said the Gulag museum had been unique and that closing it was most likely a political decision aimed at making people forget a disturbing history.

Since launching its assault on Ukraine in 2022, Russia has tightened restrictions on dissent and expanded censorship of criticism of the authorities.