Putin erases the memory of Stalinist repression and converts the Gulag Museum into another one focused on Nazi crimes

The Russian authorities announced this Friday that they will replace the Gulag History Museumdedicated to the millions of people sent to the labor camps of the USSR between 1930 and 1950 and closed since the end of 2024, for another that will recount the war crimes committed by Nazi troops during the World War II (1941-1944).

“In Moscow the Museum of Memory. It will be dedicated to the memory of the victims of the genocide of the Soviet people,” says the official statement, published on the museum’s website. The brief 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 Council, according to the agency Efespecified that the museum will open this year and that it will be headed by Natalia Kalashnikovawho until now headed the Smolensk Fortress Museum and holds a medal for his contribution to the “defense” of the Russian Federation” and participation in a “special military operation.”

The Kremlin, whose Army is accused of committing numerous crimes against humanity over the last four years in its war against Ukraine, has been promoting for months the idea that the Wehrmacht, the Einsatzgruppen and other units of the Russian troops Adolf Hitler They committed a genocide against the Soviet people, which left some 26 million dead.

Clear memory

The Gulag History Museum closed its doors in November 2024 by order of local authorities. The decision was justified in a alleged violation of fire prevention measures that threatened the safety of visitors, which led to criticism even from personalities linked to the Kremlin.

The museum, founded in 2001 and which received an award from the Council of Europe in 2021 To keep alive the memory of Stalinist repressions, it was one of the last independent institutions linked to civil society that still operated in this country.

The director of the Pushkin Museum, Elizaveta Lijachova, at the time called the closure “nonsense” – two months later the dismissal of its director, Roman Romanov, was announced – and expressed her confidence that the Russian leaders would reopen it and leave “the people in peace.”

On the eve of the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin launched a campaign against civil society that led to the closure, among others, of the organization Memorialawarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.

By closing this organization, the Kremlin, according to its critics, was trying to erase the memory of Stalinist repressions, a trend in which what happened with the Gulag History Museum would now be part of.

The gulag, the network of labor camps of the USSR, devoured all levels of Soviet society, from petty criminals to well-known intellectuals, from scientists to hardened communists, reaching chilling figures: about 20 million Soviets were locked up or died in these facilities.

“Our museum is an exercise in historical memory. The gulag is part of the history of the Russian people. 25% of the Soviets were direct or indirect victims of that system,” he commented at the time to Efe its deputy director, Yegor Larichev, 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 the Soviet leader Iósif Stalinexalting his figure with new monuments and speeches in which he celebrates his leadership in World War II, while criticizing the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Leninfor making mistakes that – in his opinion – ultimately led to the dissolution of the totalitarian State.