The
first Wednesday after my holidays I decided to go see another museum
in Moscow. The Gulag Museum is quite new, it re-opened in 2018. The
museum first opened in 2001, but was closed for renovation for a
while. (I don't know those dates.)
To
make a long story short, the gulag is the Soviet system of prison
camps all over what is now Russia. The prisoners actually built many
of the camps themselves, because when they were sent into these
remote regions most of them arrived to nothing in particular.
The
camps produced a lot of slave labour projects, including some of the
train tracks that ended up crossing the entire country. Some of the
prisoners were there for political reasons, others for criminal
convictions. Some were there for short stays, but many essentially
lived the rest of their lives in the barren landscapes of Siberia.
Before
going to the museum I googled the word gulag. The first entry was a
wikipedia post, and there was a map. Just starting to read the
wikipedia post indicated how big the entire system was, you could go
searching for information and never stop for the rest of your life.
The map showed how spread out the camps were; from the far north of
russia, to the far east, all over Siberia, etc...
I suspect that most
citizens were never very far from a gulag camp, whether they realized
it or not.
The
system was horrific, and though the government kept detailed records
on all the work being done and who went where and for how long, much
of the information has never been fully admitted publicly.
In a way,
this museum is an effort to admit that there was a system, but it
doesn't show quite how big it was, nor quite how many people were
involved.
Wandering
through the museum was intense. There are individual stories of some
of those sent to the camps, including before photos. There are no
photos of the camps, nor of the people while they lived there.
There
is a small display of barbed wire, which must've been a huge part of
the prisoners' lives. There is a display of used shell casings. There
is a display of doors, I'm not sure where they all came from.
I
don't think I'll go back to the museum, but it was nice to see at
least a little acknowledgement from the government about what
happened.
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