Russia glosses over Stalin-era repression in reinvented museum
The ‘Museum of Memory’, which has elbowed out the Gulag History Museum, is set up to commemorate the ‘genocide of the Soviet people’
In a Moscow museum that once housed evidence of Stalin-era repression, serene family scenes flickered on a screen as a narrator hailed the tranquillity of pre-World War II life in the Soviet Union.
The museum – set up to commemorate the “genocide of the Soviet people” – has elbowed out the award-winning Gulag History Museum, a harrowing collection that had for years cast a light on the killings and imprisonment of millions under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
But since Russia launched its assault on Ukraine in 2022, such criticism of the country’s past has been cast as unpatriotic, scrubbed from textbooks and the official narrative.
Instead, the Kremlin has doubled down on glossing over the horrors committed under Stalin, rehabilitating the dictator and erecting statues and busts of his likeness across the country.
