Moscow Replaces Gulag History Museum with Museum of Nazi War Crimes

The city government announced that the Gulag History Museum in Moscow, the last prominent institution dedicated to preserving the memory of Stalin’s labor camps, will be replaced by a new Museum of Memory focused on Nazi war crimes and the “genocide of the Soviet people.” The Gulag museum stopped admitting visitors in November 2024, citing “fire safety violations,” and its website was replaced with a brief statement from the Culture Department.

The Gulag museum, founded in 2001 by Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko and relocated to a restored building in 2015, held battered cell doors, clandestine camp diaries and exhibitions meant to evoke camp conditions. Museum researchers gathered oral histories and organized seminars and public events that chronicled the repression of ordinary people.

Observers link the change to a broader shift in how the Kremlin frames history. President Vladimir V.

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