Russia will replace the GULAG museum with another dedicated to Nazi crimes in the USSR

Moscow.- Russian authorities announced this Friday that they will replace the GULAG Museum, closed since the end of 2024, with another dedicated to the war crimes committed by the Nazi army during the invasion of the Soviet Union (1941-1944). "The Museum of Memory will open in Moscow. It will be dedicated to the memory of the victims of the genocide of the Soviet people," states the official statement, published on the museum's website.

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The note adds that the exhibition "will cover all stages of the war crimes committed by the Nazis during the years of the Great Patriotic War." The Moscow City Hall specified that the museum will open this year and will be headed by Natalia Kalashnikova, who received a state medal for contributing to the defense of the Russian Federation. The Kremlin, whose army is accused of committing numerous crimes against humanity in Ukraine over the past four years, has been promoting for months the idea that the Nazi army committed genocide against the Soviet people. During the Soviet episode of World War II, about 26 million Soviet citizens died, including about 8 million soldiers.

Farewell to the memory of Stalinist repressions

The GULAG history museum closed its doors in November 2024 by order of the local authorities for violating fire safety measures, which has sparked criticism even from figures linked to the Kremlin. "Fire safety violations were detected (...), which pose a threat to the safety and comfort of visitors, and must be corrected," explained the management of the museum founded in 2001 in a statement. The museum, which received an award from the Council of Europe in 2021, among other things, for keeping alive the memory of Stalinist repressions, was one of the last independent institutions linked to civil society still operating in this country. The director of the Pushkin Museum, Elizaveta Likhachova, at the time called the closure "nonsense" and expressed her confidence that the Russian leaders would reopen it and "leave the people in peace." On the eve of the start of the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin launched a campaign against civil society that led to the closure, among others, of the Memorial organization, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. Upon closing this organization, according to its critics, the Kremlin was attempting to erase the memory of Stalinist repressions, a trend in which what happened with the GULAG Museum would be framed. The GULAG, the network of Soviet labor camps, devoured all strata of Soviet society, from petty criminals to well-known intellectuals, from scientists (Koroliov or Tupolev) to hardened communists, reaching 20 million Soviets. "Our museum is an exercise in historical memory. The GULAG is part of the history of the Russian people. Twenty-five percent of Soviets were directly or indirectly victims of that system," commented its deputy director, Yegor Larichev, at the time to EFE, who admitted that the art gallery was "incomplete", since the authorities refuse to declassify the files of the feared KGB. For years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been trying to rehabilitate the figure of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, while criticizing the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, for making mistakes that - in his opinion - ultimately led to the dissolution of the totalitarian state.