Kremlin and FSB Order Gulag Museum’s Closure in Latest Crackdown on Historical Memory

High-ranking Kremlin officials and Russia’s information services were down the determination to shutter Moscow’s award-winning Gulag History Museum, Moscow officials adjacent to the substance person said.

Moscow authorities announced Wednesday that the museum, which chronicles 1 of the darkest chapters of the Soviet Union’s repressions, would temporarily adjacent owed to “fire information violations” that “pose a menace to the information and comfortableness of visitors.”

But the museum’s closure was governmental alternatively than technical.

“We’ve sent inspection teams to the depository aggregate times this year. They didn’t find immoderate occurrence information violations,” a Moscow authorities authoritative told The Moscow Times.

According to different Moscow official, the aboriginal of the depository — which was named Europe’s champion depository successful 2021 — “remains unclear.”

Both officials, who spoke connected information of anonymity owed to the sensitivity of the matter, admitted that Moscow City Hall was pressured to adjacent the museum’s doors astatine the “strong proposal from elder Kremlin figures and radical from the Federal Security Service [the successor to the Soviet KGB].”

Moscow officials were not told the crushed for the Kremlin’s decision.

Sources successful the metropolis authorities called the occurrence information violations a “smokescreen hiding the existent reasons.”

The closure whitethorn beryllium linked to the museum’s caller Prayer of Remembrance lawsuit dedicated to preserving the names of victims of Stalinist repressions. 

That lawsuit took spot successful the museum’s courtyard connected Oct. 30 aft authorities refused to authorize a nationalist gathering for the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions, ostensibly due to the fact that of Covid-19 restrictions, the autarkic quality outlet Mozhem Obyasnit reported.

The museum’s closure came arsenic a implicit astonishment to depository absorption and staff, who learned astir it connected the aforesaid time arsenic the authorities’ announcement.

They had been notified of an upcoming inspection a week prior, according to socialite Ksenia Sobchak, President Vladimir Putin’s alleged goddaughter.

First established successful 2001, the Gulag History Museum tells visitors the communicative of the Soviet Union’s immense web of forced labour camps, arsenic good arsenic their bequest successful modern Russia, with artifacts gathered from each implicit the country. 

Russian authorities person worked to downplay Soviet-era repressions successful caller years, an effort that has intensified since the full-scale penetration of Ukraine. 

Memorial, the country’s foremost enactment documenting Stalinist repressions, was unopen down, portion the authorities has signaled plans to halt the rehabilitation of Stalin’s victims and reconsider past rehabilitation rulings. At slightest 4,000 rehabilitation decisions person since been revoked. 

Memorial plaques from the Posledniy Adres [Last Address] project, which commemorates victims astatine the tract of their last residence, person besides been softly taken down successful galore Russian cities.

Neither Moscow City Hall nor the Gulag History Museum’s property bureau commented further.

But successful a astonishment move, Elizaveta Likhacheva, manager of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts successful Moscow, slammed the Gulag History Museum’s closure connected Thursday.

“In general, I volition reason that this is stupidity. In the words of Comrade Stalin, ‘stupidity bordering connected crime’,” she told the Business FM vigor station.

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