Gulag History Museum, Moscow Oblast, Russia
In 1929-1930, a network of camps began to be formed on the territory of the USSR, in which convicts served not only for domestic and criminal crimes, but also for political reasons.
Deprived of freedom, rights and normal living conditions, exhausted prisoners were forced to master hard-to-reach lands, to cut down forests, to extract coal and gold, to build railways, canals, power stations and even entire cities.
Over 20 years of the existence of the Gulag, about twenty million people passed through the camps, one in every ten remained in the GULAG for ever.
Over time, the word “Gulag”, originally designated “General Directorate of Camps”, became an ominous symbol of lawlessness, life on the verge of death, hard labor and human deprivation.
The State Museum of the History of the Gulag was founded in 2001 by Anton Vladimirovich Antonov-Ovseyenko, a well-known historian, publicist, public figure who at one time passed through Stalin’s camps as the son of an “enemy of the people”. The founder of the Museum is the Department of Culture of Moscow. The first exposition was opened in 2004.
The museum of the history of the Gulag in its subject, mission, history of origin is included in the category of museums of memory, at the heart of each of which lies a painful event, which is difficult to comprehend.
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