Gulag History State Museum, An Academically Interactive Commemoration

The entrance of the site embodies the interactive spirit of the museum, a site where visitors could feel the immense depression of Gulag labor camps. 

 Founded in 2001 by political activist and historian Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, the Gulag State History Museum was created out of a desire to present an academic and informational narrative of the bloody history of Russian labor camps under Stalin’s regime. Specifically, the Museum focus on the Soviet labor systems from the 1930’s-1950’s, and the role it played in Soviet Russia’s administration. In 2015, the state government granted the Museum’s request to move into a newly renovated five-story space in downtown Moscow, with greater space for interactive exhibits in mind(1). Remarkably, the museum benefits from the official recognition it receives from the state government, making the site exempt from a 2012 law labeling NGO grant receivers as “foreign agents” and above political scrutiny. The state control, incidentally, allows the museum greater freedom in its usage of its space and development of exhibitions (2). The museum has taken full advantage. Its permanent exhibitions include rows of prison cells built to dimensions, original doors from gulag camps, recorded sounds of gulag life and grim artifacts discovered from excavation of death pits (3). The renovated museum generates the impression that its visitors are walking into a gulag itself, as the path to the entrance crosses a guard watch-tower and investigators office. 

One of main attractions at the Gulag State Museum are the original doors from Soviet labor camps. 

The Museum’s current director, Roman Romanov, has molded the Museum to be an entirely interactive space, an area where the public can walk alongside some of the most painful moments of Russia’s history.

      "It is a space where people — visitors — can meet themselves, meet with their personal history, or with themselves in this history. It is a moment of contact." (4)

The installation of the renovated museum caused quite a stir in public reaction, as the state government is notoriously known to have a neutral and sometimes dismissive stance towards public displays of commemoration. Putin’s push has often gone against the academic memory of gulags and abuses of powers, allegedly meeting with history professors and discouraging “distortions of history.” (5) Yet, the museum seems to sit on the blurred line between official state sponsorship and collective dissonance over its past abuses of power. The result is a fascinating site that encourages individuals to construct their own interactive narratives with the past, yet downplay its severity in academic settings outside of the site. Perhaps, the site is meant to create a personal narrative, a nuanced one that acknowledges the past yet seeks to move forward.