Gulag Museum director reportedly fired for refusing to alter texts on Stalinist terror

The director of Moscow’s highly respected Gulag History Museum was removed from his post late last year for his refusal to censor an exhibit on Soviet-era repression that his staff had prepared for the Museum of Moscow, Russian independent news outlet Meduza reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the situation.

Pressure on Roman Romanov, who had been the Gulag History Museum’s director since 2012, began during the installation of the History of Moscow exhibition at the Museum of Moscow in November, when he was approached by “people from up top” and asked to revise the texts on Soviet repression to “align with the times”, a source told Meduza.

However, Romanov “flatly refused” the requests “without even hearing them out”, Meduza said, prompting the city government to close the Gulag History Museum indefinitely citing alleged fire safety violations.

“After Romanov refused to make changes to the exhibition, they decided to quietly dissolve the Gulag History Museum and merge it with the Museum of Moscow”, a source close to the museum’s Memory Foundation told Meduza.

On Monday, Moscow’s city government announced that Anna Trapkova, the current director of the Museum of Moscow, would take over from Romanov as head of the Gulag History Museum on 21 January, though no announcement of a merger between the two institutions has yet been made.

On Tuesday, journalist Ksenia Basilashvili reported that the Museum of Moscow had removed texts about the first major show trial under Stalin and the execution of high-ranking party members from the exhibition, which opened in December and documents life in the Russian capital from the time of Iron Age settlements to World War II.

Established in 2001, the Gulag History Museum is the only state museum in Russia dedicated to Soviet-era repressions and chronicles the history of the Soviet Union’s extensive prison camp network through official documents and artefacts from victims.

In 2021, the museum was awarded the Council of Europe’s Museum Prize for its work to “expose history and activate memory, with the goal of strengthening the resilience of civil society and its resistance to political repression and the violation of human rights today and in the future".