Moscow's famed gulag museum shuts

Move draws civil society concerns

Russian authorities ordered the closure from Thursday of Moscow's award-winning Gulag History Museum, dedicated to the victims of Soviet-era repression.

The closure was officially put down to alleged violations of fire safety regulations, but comes amid an intense campaign being waged by the Kremlin against independent civil society and those who question the state's interpretation of history.

"The decision to temporarily suspend the activities of the State Gulag Museum was taken for safety reasons," the Moscow city culture department told AFP on Thursday. The museum removed content from its website, replacing it with an announcement of the "temporary" closure.

They declined to comment further when contacted by AFP on Thursday.

Established in 2001, the central Moscow museum brings together official state documents with family photographs and objects from gulag victims. Moscow authorities said 46,000 people visited in the first nine months of the year.

The gulag was a vast network of prison labour camps set up in the Soviet Union.

Millions of alleged traitors and enemies of the state were sent there, many to their deaths, in what historians recognise as a period of massive political repression.

The Council of Europe awarded the site its Museum Prize in 2021, saying it worked to "expose history and activate memory, with the goal of strengthening the resilience of civil society and its resistance to political repression and violation of human rights today and in the future."

Outside the museum on Thursday, worker Mikhail, who declined to give his last name, lamented its possible closure.

"It's a strong museum, very impressive. It's disappointing that this happened. It's a loss, a great loss if, God forbid, it's permanent," he told AFP. "We need people to see it, to understand, to know that it must not be repeated." afp