Memory replacement. Moscow’s Gulag History Museum to be replaced by an exhibition on the “genocide of the Soviet people”

The site of the former Gulag History Museum in Moscow, which was shut down by authorities in November 2024, will soon host a “Museum of Memory”. According to the museum’s website, the new institution will abandon the topic of Soviet state terror and instead be dedicated to the “genocide of the Soviet people” and Nazi war crimes.

The Moscow mayor’s office announced that the new museum is slated to open in 2026. Visitors to the “Museum of Memory” will learn about “manifestations of Nazism, biological weapons testing on Soviet citizens by the Japanese, the liberating mission of the Red Army, [and] trials of Nazi criminals,” the mayor’s office website emphasised.

To lead the new institution, authorities have appointed Natalya Kalashnikova, a veteran of the war in Ukraine. Kalashnikova has directed the “Smolensk Fortress” museum since April 2025. She previously served as the head of the science department at the composer Alexander Scriabin museum and as pro-rector of the Moscow State Institute of Culture. She also holds the title of combat veteran and has been awarded medals “To a Participant of the Special Military Operation” and “For Contribution to Strengthening Defence”.

The Gulag History Museum, a state-funded institution founded in 2001 by a Soviet dissident Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, was dedicated to preserving the memory of victims of Soviet repressions. It abruptly ceased operations on November 14, 2024, after a government inspection supposedly uncovered “fire safety violations” in the building.

Just weeks before its closure, the museum had hosted a “prayer of memory” where participants read the names of those who perished under Soviet terror.

In January 2025, the Moscow Department of Culture officially fired the museum’s long-time director, Roman Romanov, who had led the institution since 2012. Elizaveta Likhacheva, director of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, who publicly defended the institution against the closure, was abruptly fired from her position a week after Romanov; she refused to ask if it was related to her “stupidity bordering on crime” comment.

By December 2025, President Vladimir Putin had excluded Romanov from the presidential Human Rights Council.

The total erasure of the Gulag museum aligns with the Kremlin’s ongoing focus on revision of historical memory. In June 2024, the government updated its official Concept for Commemorating Victims of Political Repression. The revised document removed the word “mass” to describe Soviet terror and alleged that a 1955 amnesty had led to the “rehabilitation and whitewashing of Nazi accomplices and traitors to the Motherland who served in Baltic, Ukrainian, and other punitive divisions”. Following this, in September 2024, Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov ordered a systematic review to identify and overturn decisions on the rehabilitation of Soviet repression victims.

In February 2026, the human rights organisation Memorial, known for investigating human rights abuses and researching Soviet-era state terror, was designated an “undesirable organisation” in Russia, rendering any involvement with it a criminal offence. Memorial was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.