Museum GULAG History Museum

The GULAG History Museum falls into a category of memorial museums because of its topic, mission, and origin. Each of them is based on a painful event that is hard to comprehend.

The collection of the GULAG History Museum includes an archive of documents, letters, memoirs of former prisoners of the GULAG, their personal things related to their story of imprisonment, works of art created both by artists who went through the GULAG and contemporary creators who offer their own view on this subject. The Museum’s collection is regularly replenished by new exhibits, photographs, paintings, documents, and camp life artifacts.

The Museum’s exposition is dedicated to the history of origination, development, and decline of the system of corrective-labor camps that served as the main part of the state policy in the 1930s – 1950s. It is also dedicated to its administrative and economic role. The Museum halls also show the lives of the people who were imprisoned falling victim to the repressive policy. One of the main aims of the Museum’s permanent exposition is highlighting the topic of historical memory preservation as well as bringing attention to both redefining the past and understanding tasks of the future.

The Museum organizes stationary and mobile exhibitions based on the main collections and in collaboration with other museums, archives, institutes, publishing houses, monasteries, public organizations, cultural and educational centers, centers of modern art as well as collectors, artists, and photographers.

Sessions, meetings, and presentations take place in the Museum regularly. They are devoted to new research works on the history of the GULAG.

The Museum holds lectures, performances, concerts, film screenings, artistic meetings, and performances offering an image-based interpretation of the repression. The Museum also has its Documentation Center, Library and Volunteers’ Social Center. A memorial garden will be created on the territory adjacent to the Museum.

We're grateful to Timur Bulgakov for creating the audio guide

The rich in facts and concise narration on the history of the GULAG is completed by the fragments of the works by a composer Mikhail Nosyrev (1924—1981). He survived in the coal mines of the Vorkutinsky Camp and preserved not only his will to live but also the ability to create excellent music. Moreover, you will hear the sounds recorded by the Museum team at the ruins of the GULAG facilities.

The full version of the audio guide is available at the Museum.