Museum of Gulag

The Museum of Gulag consists of a permanent exhibition and different temporary exhibitions that change every month; they are not just about the Gulag system, but are dealing generally with the theme of historical memory and the different ways to speak about it and approach people towards it.

In the permanent exhibition there are historical information about people that suffered from the Gulag system, objects belonging to prisoners, and paintings portraying the reality of the camps of and that want at the same time to represent the feelings of the imprisoned people.

Through their stories you can understand a bit more clearly what it was like in the Soviet era, what were the reasons for people to be imprisoned, you can see it was really simple to be considered a political oppositor, so also people that were not openly against the Soviet system were detained in the camps, and obliged to forced labor, sometimes just because they were relatives of somebody involved in the fight against the communist regime.

The project currently underway , the “Living Book of Memory” is a way to let former prisoners to speak for themselves, tell their own stories and thoughts about their  Gulag experience.

These “living” books are translated in English, so also foreign visitors are able to read their interesting stories.

If you go in the room nearby, you can see a  reconstruction of a typical camp, that gives you an idea of the really poor living conditions of the people there.

Till the end of April was on the “International Video Festival Now and After ’14, Memory Migration”, where artists from around the world tried to explain their own view about memory, and the connection between memory and migration, in order to show how memory is not a fixed concept, like sometimes we could think.

Name: Museum of Gulag

Webpage:http://www.gmig.ru/view/event/40

Adress: ул. Петровка, д.16
Nearest subwaystation: Чеховская

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