Eclipsing Stalin: The GULAG History Museum in Moscow as a Manifestation of Russia’s Official Memory of Soviet Repression

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the temporary (2015) and permanent (2018) expositions of Moscow’s GULAG History Museum (GHM), and the documents surrounding its creation. The analysis demonstrates two key findings. First, focusing on the Gulag and omitting post-Gulag Soviet repression, the GHM ultimately works to historicize the former. Second, while prominently ending the permanent exposition with Stalin’s death, the GHM nevertheless downplays his role in the repression. The Gulag becomes a thing of the past, something to acknowledge––and leave behind. Stalin, however, is extracted from that past: he remains in the present, as part of the official “Great Patriotic War” memory.


Introduction
On June 19, 1936, people across the USSR could witness a total eclipse of the sun.Soviet citizens showed great interest in this astronomical phenomenon and gathered in public places to observe it.A photograph of a man and a boy, presumably father and son, who wear special glasses and look at the disappearing sun, with another man reading Pravda next to them, crowns an information panel dedicated to the Great Purge of 1937-1938.It is November 2015, and we are at the new GULAG 1 History Museum (GHM) in Moscow.It has just opened to the public, after the move to a new building and a complete renewal of its exposition.The information panel in question, titled "An Eclipse.The Great Purge" (original italics), opens the exposition's second hall.In no uncertain terms, the panel calls Joseph Stalin "the main mastermind of the mass repression" that aimed to suppress any attempts at dissidence in the country.The purge, the panel informs the visitor, was carefully planned by Stalin and his comrades, resulting in more than 1.5 million people being arrested, of whom about 700 thousand were executed.Yet, this chapter of Soviet history--arguably, the darkest--is illustrated with people mesmerized by the 1936 solar eclipse.An extract from a dictionary, presented nearby, explains that, in addition to denoting an astronomical phenomenon, the word "eclipse" can also mean "a temporary cloudiness of consciousness, a loss of the ability to think, understand, or comprehend something clearly." What did the curators intend to emphasize with this eclipse metaphor?Did they want to explain the inexplicable?If so, their intention is partly successful: people did indeed live in an atmosphere perverted by the political system and, their minds clouded by propaganda, saw enemies in neighbors, friends, and even their own parents.But the metaphor does more than that: it also changes how the inhumane--but conceived and implemented by humans--act of repression is presented.If everybody's consciousness was clouded, does it mean that the responsibility for the Great Purge was collective (and hence, in the style of Soviet communism, no one's)?Where does this kind of logic leave Stalin and the other members of the nomenklatura who signed the execution lists?
The information panel, as well as the temporary exposition of which it was part, does not exist anymore.In December 2018, after three years of existence, the temporary GHM exposition was replaced with a new, permanent one.Even though it had lost its textual manifestation, however, the eclipse metaphor might not have been eliminated from the museum altogether.
This article presents an attempt to understand what the GULAG History Museum tells us about Russia's official memory of Stalin, the Great Purge, the Gulag, and political repression in the Soviet Union more broadly.A state museum located in the country's capital city, the GHM is central to the construction and presentation of tangible memory about the Gulag and Soviet repression.The museum, too, perceives itself as "an important stage in implementing the state policy conception for commemorating victims of political repression" (GHM 2016, 9; see also Medvedeva 2016).Moreover, according to the GHM's 2016 report (at the moment of this writing, the last one published on the museum's website), [t]he Museum's major mission is to maintain the historical past and re-think it in the name of the future.The Museum is intended to become a public platform for public [sic!] presentation, studying and discussing the most relevant aspects of the history of mass repressions, forced labor and political unfreedom in the USSR.(GHM 2016, 11) Thus, the museum seeks to be not only a place for the preservation of Gulag memory, but also a forum in which repression and overall unfreedom in the Soviet Union would be debated and reflected upon.Against this background, we view the GHM as both a "memory museum," that is, a museum dedicated to the commemoration of a tragic fragment of the past (Arnold- de Simine 2013), and a principal "mnemonic actor," that is, one of the "protagonists in a discourse that they construct about the past" (Bernhard and Kubik 2014, 12).As a remembrance institution, the GHM strives to maintain good relations with the community of historians, civil activists, and other professionals working with and on Soviet repression, as demonstrated by changed foci in the permanent exposition following the critique of the temporary one (discussed in this article).As a state museum receiving funds from the Moscow budget, the GHM cannot but do so with an eye to official memory politics and the wider public's demands.Moreover, since the Russian government approved (on August 15, 2015) a Conception of the State Policy for Commemorating the Victims of Political Repression, the museum has served as "a coordinator and main contractor" of this document (GHM 2015, 76).In other words, the GHM finds itself between rocks and hard places (cf.Hardy 2020).How does this influence the museum's memory work, first and foremost the way its expositions have represented Stalin, the Gulag, and Soviet repression more broadly?What is the relationship between what was conceived at the planning stages and what manifestations these plans acquired?What can be concluded about the museum's expositions in relation to the broader memory politics of the Russian authorities?
Building on the authors' previous work on the museum (Dubina 2015(Dubina , 2019;;Zavadski 2015Zavadski , 2016)), this article goes further to include comparative and temporal perspectives.By comparing the two expositions of the new GHM (the temporary exposition and the permanent one), we trace the changes in the museum's construction and representation of the memory of Soviet political repression that occurred over time.The study is based on our continuous field work in the museum since its (re)opening in late 2015, and on the documents surrounding the museum's creation.Our analysis of the two expositions broadly follows Stephanie Moser's (2010) method of analyzing displays: we consider the location and setting of the museum; the exposition's space; the design, color, and lighting used; the exhibition's layout and style; and the texts as well as the messages conveyed by them.The documents, of which we conduct a close reading, include two "exposition concept notes" (Bulgakov 2016;Galkova 2014) and the "museum development guide" (Larichev 2014). 2 Additionally, we conducted an interview with the GHM's director, Roman Romanov (personal communication 2021), 3 who clarified some issues and commented on our key findings.
In what follows, we discuss our theoretical framework; briefly delineate Russia's official memory politics; outline a history of the GHM; and then analyze the aforementioned materials with regard to a number of purposefully identified themes.These include: the period covered; Joseph Stalin and other perpetrators; victims and their voices; Gulag economics; and the Gulag and the "Great Patriotic War" (1941)(1942)(1943)(1944)(1945).Some of these themes are rooted in memory museum research, while others are specific to the history of Soviet political repression.Our analysis demonstrates two key findings.First, by focusing on the Gulag and leaving post-Gulag Soviet repression out of the exposition, the GHM ultimately works to historicize the Gulag part of the Soviet past.Second, while ending the exposition narrative with Stalin's death, the GHM nevertheless significantly downplays his role in the repression.As a result, the Gulag becomes a thing of the past, something to acknowledge--and leave behind.Stalin, however, is extracted from that past: he remains in the present, as part of the official memory of the "Great Patriotic War."

Memory Museums and Mnemonic Actors: Confluences and Divergences
The rise of the memory museum started in the aftermath of World War II and is a result of the second memory boom of the 1960s-1970s (Hoskins and O'Loughlin 2010).Susan Sontag famously described the memory museum as "a product of a way of thinking about, and mourning, the destruction of European Jewry in the 1930s and 1940s" (2003,77).Gradually, memory museums came to commemorate various cases of mass suffering.Today, as argued by Silke Arnold-de Simine, "the genre of the memory museum is by no means restricted to Holocaust museums anymore," and not necessarily to museums dedicated to mass suffering, "but addresses very different historical events and periods" (2013,11).Against this background, memory museums are understood in this article as museums dedicated to various fragments of the past and actualizing memories of that past.
Several related features distinguish memory museums from "traditional" historical museums.The latter favor a rational and linear approach, and make extensive use of material objects and artifacts.The former actively employ affective and participatory techniques and rely on visual tools (Arnold- de Simine 2013).Historical museums tend(ed) to carry out a "civilizing," educational function, while memory museums seek to "make things right": restore historical justice by giving voice to those who previously were deprived of it.Historical museums usually emphasize the interests and objectives of the nation-state.Memory museums are governed by the ethical approach of "never again," with human rights as their principal framework (Khlevnyuk 2019a).More often than not, historical museums promote heroic narratives, while memory museums place victims and their stories at the center (Hansen-Glucklich 2014; Sodaro 2018).
It is important to note that drawing a distinction between historical museums and memory museums is not always straightforward or productive.Some museums engage in commemorative and, more broadly, mnemonic practices, but do so in a way that could be seen as that of "traditional" historical museums.Moreover, the latter, too, affect how individuals engage with the past, which ultimately plays a role in the collective remembrance of a historical event.Perhaps a more productive distinction between memory museums and "traditional" historical museums could be made along the lines of "the new museology" (Vergo 1989), rather than obsolescent binary "memory vs. history." 4The new museology has challenged the hierarchies within the "exhibitor, spectator, and object" triad by placing emphasis on multiperspectivity as well as the visitor's active role in the meaning-making process (Arnold- de Simine 2013;Message 2006;Vergo 1989).In this context, the memory museum could be seen as one of the "new museums" (Message 2006) that seek to depart from one overarching narrative and strive toward a polyphony of voices, as opposed to "traditional" historical museums that tend to impose a conclusive perspective on a fragment of the past (Arnold- de Simine 2013).
Another important factor speaking against the stark division of historical and memory museums is the existence of official memory politics and the compulsive necessity of museums, especially state ones and especially in nondemocratic contexts, to balance it with their exhibition narratives.Here, we build on political scientists Michael H. Bernhard and Jan Kubik's theorization of "mnemonic actors" (2014, 4): They are political forces that are interested in a specific interpretation of the past.They often treat history instrumentally in order to construct a vision of the past that they assume will generate the most effective legitimation for their efforts to gain and hold power.
According to Bernhard and Kubik (2014), when actors assume a particular approach to a fragment of the past, they consider the potential consequences in which their decision might result.This includes considering how a choice "might affect support from society at large and what sort of response it might provoke from other actors" (Bernhard and Kubik 2014, 11).In other words, when taking a stance, a mnemonic actor has to factor in the potential responses of different communities and (professional) groups.In the Bernhard and Kubik (2014) conceptualization, mnemonic actors include various individuals: professional historians, artists, intellectuals, journalists, politicians, and so on.Thus, viewing a memory museum--an institution--as a mnemonic actor entails some level of abstraction.Evidently, multiple actors, with more or less differing stances, are involved in the work of a museum.Yet, an exposition necessarily presents a negotiation of these actors' various positions and can therefore be analyzed as a consensual product of collective memory work.

Official Memory of Soviet Repression in Russia
The Russian authorities' political instrumentalization of the past, especially in the years since Vladimir Putin came to power, has received considerable scholarly attention (see, for instance, Fedor et al. 2017;Kalinin 2013;Kangaspuro 2011;Koposov 2018;Litvinenko and Zavadski 2020;Malinova 2018;Miller and Lipman 2012;Smith 2002;Wijermars 2019).Perestroika and the subsequent dissolution of the USSR rendered the Communist historical meta-narrative obsolete (Wijermars 2019) and opened the way for a review of the Soviet legacy.In the early 1990s, "the interpretation of the past in the public rhetoric of the new Russian leadership served first of all to legitimize the radical transformation of the Soviet regime which had been denounced as 'totalitarian'" (Malinova 2017, 48).However, Boris Yeltsin, whose memory politics has been described as inconsistent and "episodic" (Koposov 2018, 220), conducted "no systematic and thorough relegation of the Bolshevik legacy" (Litvinenko and Zavadski 2020, 7).Moreover, as economic and social problems began to multiply, signs of disenchantment with the first post-Soviet decade and its propositions and of a nostalgia for the Soviet past appeared in Russian society.Seeking to be reelected in 1996, Yeltsin responded to this societal mood swing with a shift in the official treatment of the past.His team took to developing a kind of cultural patriotism that emphasized the country's achievements (Koposov 2018).The goal was to invent a "new national idea" that would bring reconciliation, unity, and consensus to Russian society (Malinova 2017, 54), but the authorities were unsuccessful in achieving it (Smith 2002;Wijermars 2019).
Upon assuming office, Putin began to build on this foundation, "using different means in pursuit of quite different goals" (Koposov 2018, 216).His treatment of the past was more decisive and purposeful.Ideas of Russia as a "great power" and a "thousand-year-old state" became key to the official treatment of the past, which consisted in a "selective appropriation" of historical events and symbols for political purposes (Malinova 2017, 57).The Soviet legacy came to be regarded as "the foundation of national cohesion, prosperity, and greatness" (Koposov 2018, 239), with the victory in the "Great Patriotic War" acquiring crucial importance.Overall, however, Putin's patchwork-like memory politics took to treating the country's history like a natural resource, using it for purposes of power consolidation (Kalinin 2013).The "oil well" of the past has been exploited regardless of logic and, at times, historical fact, which led Aleksei Miller to theorize Russia's politics of memory as a "historical politics," that is, a set of practices used by various state actors in order to impose specific interpretations of the past on its citizens (Miller 2009;Miller and Lipman 2012).
Time and again, the memory of the Gulag and Soviet repression fell victim to this development of memory politics.Daria Khlevnyuk outlines three periods of dealing with the memory of Soviet repression before the dissolution of the USSR: Nikita Khrushchev's, Leonid Brezhnev's, and Mikhail Gorbachev's (2019b).In 1956, three years after Stalin's death, Khrushchev condemned his cult of personality and its consequences, initiating the first, if limited, wave of de-Stalinization.Under Brezhnev, "anti-Stalinist sentiment weakened.Moreover, one could detect indicators of re-Stalinization" (Khlevnyuk 2019b, 320).With Gorbachev's Perestroika, a second wave of de-Stalinization began: Stalin and Stalinism were denounced, rehabilitations were carried out, commemorative events were held, and the first museum expositions dedicated to the Gulag were opened to the public (Bogumił 2018(Bogumił [2012]]).Once the Soviet Union ceased to exist, however, these developments took a new twist.While activists continued the work begun earlier, officials--who set out to implement democratic reforms--believed that "the explorations of the Stalinist past had played their role in discrediting the Soviet system but had since outlived their usefulness.National history would be of no help in planning market reforms" (Koposov 2018, 210).When nostalgia started to take hold of Russian citizens, it became clear that criticizing the Soviet past "would split Russian society and alienate a large portion of the electorate" (Malinova 2017, 53).Once reelected in 1996, Yeltsin focused his memory politics on the cultural achievements of pre-Soviet times as well as on the victory in the "Great Patriotic War." Vladimir Putin's memory politics marked a less ambivalent stance toward Stalin.Nikolay Koposov observes: Beginning in his first years in office, Putin several times allowed himself to express a much more positive evaluation of Stalin than could ever have been articulated by a state official under Yeltsin, which was taken as a sign of encouragement by numerous Stalinists eager to rehabilitate the dictator, so that the early 2000s saw a rise in pro-Stalin propaganda.However, by 2003 or 2004, it became clear that there were limits to Stalin's possible rehabilitation, not to mention that, if successful, that rehabilitation would be apt to undermine Russia's image as a democratic country.The image of Stalin was proving too problematic to be chosen as the key historical symbol of post-soviet Russia.(2018, 246;cf. Levada-Center 2019) Focusing on the victory in the "Great Patriotic War" as a key event in the history of the "great Russian state," Putin's memory politics has presented Stalin as a leader whose role in defeating the Nazis had been crucial.The Soviet "state violence and political repressions were bracketed out of this picture" (Malinova 2017, 58).Having analyzed all presidential speeches that Putin and Dmitry Medvedev delivered between 2000 and 2016 on the occasion of Victory Day, Olga Malinova shows that the topic of "the people's double victimhood-at the hands of Hitler and Stalin alike-has virtually disappeared from the official discourse" (2017,63).
That said, a parallel development, at odds with the overarching official rhetoric and broader historical politics, has taken place.In 2015, Medvedev, then prime minister, signed a State Policy on Commemorating the Memory of Victims of Political Repression.Developed at the order of President Putin, the policy concept was seen as an important milestone in the authorities' treatment of the Soviet past.Arseny Roginsky, then head of the Memorial Society, commented in an interview that the document represented the first instance in which the current government had "unequivocally condemned the Soviet terror" (Nechepurenko 2015).As part of the new policy, memory of the victims of Soviet political repression was to be perpetuated in a series of commemorative, educational, scholarly, and other events.Museums, memorials, and victim databases were to be created; archives were to be (re)opened.Some of these goals have been partially achieved.The GULAG History Museum moved to a larger building and, in late 2015, opened its new exposition.In September 2017, a monument titled "The Garden of Memory," dedicated to over 20 thousand people murdered by the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) during the Great Purge, was opened in Moscow's Butovo.Another monument, titled "The Wall of Sorrow," was unveiled in Moscow two months later.
Yet, it is telling that these major projects were all implemented in or around Moscow.Parallel to that, events that stand in sharp contrast to this policy concept were taking place.For example, several branches of the Memorial Society, the oldest organization in Russia working to record and commemorate the history of Soviet political repression, were declared "foreign agents."The Perm-36 Museum of Political Repressions was taken over by the authorities of the Perm krai, its founders pushed aside, and its displays changed (for details, see Dubina 2019; Giesen 2019).Yuri A. Dmitriev, a historian and head of the Memorial Society's Karelian branch, who had found evidence of thousands of victims of Stalin's Great Purge executed in Sandarmokh, was arrested on--it is widely believed, false-charges and sentenced to 13 years in prison.Is Gulag memory being "ghettoized," as suggested by some (Zavadski 2015)?
If anything, this speaks of the inconsistency of the official memory of Soviet repression.On the one hand, repression has been acknowledged by the Russian authorities; on the other hand, it has not become part of active memory work on the official level.Moreover, Stalin as the leader who secured victory in the Great Patriotic War is largely extracted from the narrative about repression.On the one hand, there is a State Policy on Commemorating the Memory of Victims of Political Repression; on the other one, "as of yet, it does not really work" (Romanov, personal communication 2021).According to Romanov (personal communication 2021; cf.Medvedeva 2016), some people are trying to rely on it, but success significantly depends on the support of local authorities, which activists often do not receive.

A Brief History of the GHM
The GULAG History Museum is a "state budgetary institution of culture" established in 2001 by the City of Moscow Department of Culture (GHM Charter 2018, 2), at the initiative of the historian and Gulag survivor Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, who became the museum's director.The first iteration of the museum, opened in 2004, occupied a small space at Petrovka 16, a building that has no connection to the history of repression.Since the late 1980s, activists had suggested opening a museum at Nikolskaia 23, where the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, one of the key bodies responsible for repression, had been located.However, according to the critic Grigory Revzin, Yuri Luzhkov, who at the time was Moscow's mayor and who made the decision to establish the museum and finance it from the city budget, liked "everything to be on full display" [nagliadno]: "Similar to erecting a palace of Catherine [the Great] in Tsaritsyno, which had never existed, here [he created] a camp that had not been there before.A Gulag new-build" (Revzin 2009).
The first exposition, entitled "In the Clutches of Repression," consisted of three parts: a department of history and documents, an art department (with sculptures, paintings and drawings by artists who went through the camps), and a department of waxworks and installations.Writing five years after the museum's opening, Revzin (2009) is highly critical of the exposition, pointing to the "ludicrous" waxworks of an NKVD interrogator and an interrogatee and several Gulag inmates, as well as to the fact that Oleg Kalmykov, then the museum's chief tour guide and head of conservation, wears an NKVD uniform when conducting excursions.Overall, the exposition had a do-it-yourself quality, which was typical of the first Gulag-themed exhibitions.Meant to prevent Gulag memory from falling into oblivion, they generally accomplished their task.That said, this first iteration of the GHM remains beyond the scope of the current analysis (see Hardy 2020 for a more detailed account).
In 2012, the museum changed directors: Antonov-Ovseenko was replaced by Roman Romanov, a then 30-yearold psychologist, who has headed the GHM since.That same year, Moscow's authorities, in response to complaints of a lack of space, decided to allocate a new building for the museum, at 1-y Samotechnyi pereulok 9/1.The building located at this address is a former dormitory that, again, is not tied to Gulag history (for a discussion of what this means, see Dubina 2019).In the museum development guide, authored by the museum's then deputy director, Egor Larichev (2014), this latter fact is referred to as "a regrettable disadvantage" of the new location, for it denotes a loss of the geographic and symbolic closeness to the Nikolskaia 23 building, the Lubyanka Square NKVD headquarters, and other centers of repression that the old building had.Yet, the document seeks to make the best of the situation by stating the following: The absence of an immediate connection to the topic [of repression] provides an opportunity to build a general objective narrative about the [Gulag] phenomenon (and the museum's cultural program) without the necessity to go into any concrete spectre of events.(Larichev 2014, 17) The new building is four times larger than the old one.It has provided an expansion of the museum by 1,800 sq.m. in total, including additional 927.5 sq.m. of exhibition space, 252 sq.m. of depository, and 143 sq.m. of office space.Moreover, it has allowed the museum to create an on-site library, a conference hall, studios for art classes, a separate memory garden, and similar (Larichev 2014, 25).
Between 2012 and 2015, the building was renovated, and a new exposition was being prepared.The museum development guide states that the previous exposition was "not very informative and [was] difficult to perceive without a tour guide.The exhibition narrative itself was organized superficially [and] does not allow for a deep understanding of the topic" (Larichev 2014, 5).The new exposition, titled "From Solovki to Kolyma," opened on October 30, 2015, and was announced as temporary.Three years later, on December 10, 2018, it was supplemented with a new, permanent exposition called "The Gulag in People's Fates and the Country's History."These two consecutive expositions at the new GHM constitute the subject of the current analysis.

The Period Covered
What period to cover when talking about Soviet political repression is not such a straightforward question as it might seem at first glance.Does one tell the story of political repression in the Communist state?The history of the Great Purge and Stalinism more broadly?Or the history of the Gulag as "The Main Directorate of the Camps"?By choosing to focus on the latter, which is reflected in both the museum's name and its exposition, the GHM made not only a historiographical decision, but also, we argue, a political one.The following analysis substantiates this argument.
Preparing the exposition to open in the new building in late 2015, the GHM staff considered different time frames.The first concept note of the new museum (Galkova 2014) focuses on the period between 1919 and the 1950s.The starting point marks the resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) on the creation of forced-labor camps, while the end point denotes the dismantling of the camp system following Stalin's death in 1953 and Krushchev's "Secret Speech" of 1956.Crucially, however, the concept note says: The Gulag story can hardly be ended with the moment of the [camp] system's abolishment.The story of former inmates' return and socialization, the stages of the public's working through the topic in a situation of relative freedom or of re-imposed prohibition, the gradual opening of the topic for systematic analysis and discussion, and for reflection on the Gulag's lessons--all of these aspects are integral to the very topic of Gulag history.Consequently, the [exposition's] narrative will be continued up to today.(Galkova 2014, 1, our emphasis) With the Gulag system being the exposition's core, the concept note also proposes the last section to be dedicated to the "After the camps" period: the release and rehabilitation of inmates, their return to life (including the lack of restitution), campthemed publications of Krushchev's Thaw, witness testimonies about the Gulag under Brezhnev, the Gulag in the 1990s (including the work of civic and state actors), and finally, the present day ("what should still be done") (Galkova 2014, 6-7).The museum development guide (Larichev 2014), which incorporates Irina Galkova's (2014) concept note in its entirety, nevertheless contradicts the latter document in the exposition's periodization.Arguing that the topic of the Gulag has to be reflected upon both as part of the general history of political repression in the USSR and as part of its own specificity, it goes on to suggest that the topic's time frame should "at best be defined as the late 1920s (the beginning of the formation of a camp system oriented at the usage of inmates' labor) to the late 1950s (the reorganization and liquidation of the Gulag system)" (Larichev, 2014, 12-13).
By contrast, the 2015 exposition started its narrative in 1918, when the first "concentration camps" (as they were called then) appeared in the Soviet state, and ended with displays on the rehabilitation of inmates after Stalin's death and on the memory of the Gulag today.Displayed in the hall dedicated to the "Doctors' Plot" (which is notable in itself: were Soviet doctors implicated in the dictator's demise?), the death of Stalin was represented through a video recording of his funeral.All around her, the visitor could see people crying and mourning their leader.At the room's exit, videos were shown in which the funeral's participants/witnesses talked about their experiences.Every now and then, the Gulag and purges were mentioned, but one cannot help but wonder what purpose this display of collective grief had in the exposition.During a visit to the GHM, one of this article's authors asked several guides about it.Explanations and interpretations differed; one of them was that the display meant to emphasize the strangeness of people crying over the death of a tyrant.
The last display, dedicated to Gulag memory today, obligingly informed the visitor that in October 2014, "President Vladimir Putin supported the initiative of Russian activists to create a monument to victims of political repression" (unveiled in 2017).It also stated that in 2015, Russia's government approved a policy on the commemoration of victims of political repression.However, not a single mention of post-Stalinist political repression in the USSR was to be found (Zavadski 2015).This stands in contrast with the museum's mission to be a "platform for public presentation, studying and discussing [. ..] political unfreedom in the USSR" (GHM 2016, 11, our emphasis;see also, GHM 2015, 9).According to Romanov (personal communication 2021), this was a conscious decision based on the constraints of exhibition space: "one would have to create a separate museum dedicated to post-Stalinist repression."However, the role of these constraints should not be overestimated.The Gulag Atlas, a book published by the GHM in 2018, follows the same logic, despite the book format being much more flexible than the space of a museum (Atlas Gulaga 2018).Jeffrey Hardy, writing about the temporary exposition, contends that "focusing almost exclusively on Stalin-era political prisoners means that its [the state's] past transgressions can be neatly compartmentalized" (2020,294).
The concept note of the permanent exposition suggests that it should include the whole existence of the Soviet state, from 1917 to 1991 (Bulgakov 2016, 11).The exposition does begin in 1917, but it de facto ends even more abruptly than the temporary one: with Stalin's death.The visitor walks through a dark cage-like corridor made of prison bars, crosses the line of March 3, 1953 (drawn on the floor and specially illuminated), and finds herself in a well-lit room--presumably an absolutely new reality, one "after the repression."Here, she encounters a vitrine with former inmates' suitcases and rehabilitation certificates; however, this hall pays little attention to inmates' post-Gulag struggles 5 and, with the exposition culminating in Stalin's death, feels like a reluctant side note.Further, the visitor sees only staggering statistics that sum up the exposition and photographs of places where Gulag camps used to be.
It is worth dwelling a little longer on how the two expositions end.According to Romanov (personal communication 2021), the temporary exposition had "a happy end" (the creation of the GHM, the adoption of a state policy on commemorating political repression victims, and the overall rise in public remembrance of Soviet repression), for which it was criticized.In turn, the last exhibit of the permanent exposition is a video screen that demonstrates interviews with "ordinary" people, most of whom have no idea what "Gulag" denotes.This is meant to emphasize, Romanov argues (personal communication 2021), that the memory work is far from complete: "It is a wound that is still bleeding."Yet, in the context of Russia's memory politics, which has prioritized Soviet achievements over the regime's darker sides, seeing this memory fading can easily provoke a reaction opposite to a feeling of responsibility for its preservation.If people do not care about this memory, perhaps it is not worth caring about?

Joseph Stalin and Other Perpetrators
The representation of Stalin, the Gulag's mastermind (Khlevniuk 2004), 6 is key to a Gulag museum.What role in conceiving and organizing the repression is attributed to him?Are other perpetrators presented and how?The first exposition concept note envisions Stalin's role in the organization of repression and the creation of the Gulag as a separate display within the "Gulag in the system of repression" section (Galkova, 2014, 3).The museum development guide (Larichev 2014), while including the above-mentioned exposition concept note, does not discuss the issue of Stalin and other perpetrators.Yet, conceptualizing the museum as a memory museum/a museum of consciousness, the development guide distinguishes between a museum of victims and a museum of redemption.The former, according to the document, implies "an act of restoring justice and of moral compensation," while the latter emphasizes "personal responsibility for such tragedies" (Larichev 2014, 12).The development guide concludes: Considering the imminent necessity of [Russian] society's complex state of reflection on the Gulag topic as well as the state status of the museum, it seems that the GULAG History Museum has to be oriented at presenting the topic in a way that would gravitate toward a redemptive discourse.(Larichev 2014, 12) It is thus suggested that dwelling on those responsible for Soviet repression is inadvisable.The (temporary) exhibition, however, departed from this conception.As discussed in the Introduction to this article, the exposition's beginning unequivocally presented Stalin as "the main mastermind of the mass repression."And even though this outright definition was somewhat obscured by the solar eclipse metaphor ("people lost their ability to understand and comprehend anything, they looked for 'saboteurs ' [vrediteli] and 'enemies of the people' everywhere"), the presence of Stalin and his comrades was quite noticeable in the temporary exposition.For example, there was a module demonstrating Stalin's decisive role in the Great Purge: On July 3, 1937, Stalin sent to People's Commissar for Internal Affairs Yezhov [head of the NKVD] and to the regional party leaders the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU to begin a repression campaign against "anti-Soviet elements."Twentyfour hours later, NKVD units across the country took to compiling lists of the citizens who were to be exiled and executed.[. ..]On July 31, the Politburo-approved order No. 00447 was forwarded to the NKVD units of the republics, krais, and oblasts.The operation that followed from this order became the largest one of the Great Purge.
Copies of documents featuring Stalin's signatures and/or emphasizing his direct involvement in planning the repression were visibly on display.The section dedicated to Soviet show trials informed the visitor that "for Stalin, organizing public show trials became a convenient form of inner-party power struggle."The role of other nomenklatura members was also discussed.In the section dedicated to the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, "the most important component of Stalin's terror," the organization's head, Vasilii Ulrikh, was reviewed.Ulrikh's 1937 letter to Viacheslav Molotov, then chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, thanking Molotov for "a high assessment" of the Military Collegium's work in "strengthening revolutionary lawfulness and protecting the state's interests," was prominently on display.The Military Collegium, housed at Nikolskaia 23, is known as "the shooting house": more than 40 thousand people had been tried and sentenced there.Importantly, Stalin was present even in this section.Discussing Ulrikh's role in organizing these crimes, the caption said: However, the whole judicial practice of dealing with the most important cases of "high treason, the preparation and realization of terrorist acts, espionage, and sabotage," was conducted under the direction of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU headed by Stalin.
In the new exposition, Stalin's presence has been muted.He has not been eliminated from it entirely, but remains there in a remote way.At the beginning, there is an (art?) installation dedicated to the repression's legal and ideological foundation.Perpetrators are named and illustrated with photographic portraits.Extracts from laws, ideas, and thoughts of politicians and party functionaries are quoted in abundance.The elements are connected by multiple threads, creating a network of terror.All of these threads lead to Stalin, whose portrait--unlike those of the others--is not a photograph, but a profile sketch drawn with dots.Some effort is required to discern the Soviet dictator in this schematic representation.The small-sized caption is located at the bottom, which makes it difficult to read.As a result, everything seems interconnected, everybody is to blame, and . . .Stalin is barely visible.In the accompanying information display, he is not present at all.In addition to documents referred to in the text (the first Soviet Penal Code, for example), there is a mention of Vladimir Lenin, who "recommended 'expanding use of execution by shooting' for counter-revolutionary assaults against the Soviet state," but no mention of Stalin.The 1927 Statute on State Crimes, which was incorporated into the updated penal codes of all republics and which provided "a legal basis for political repression," was approved, the display states, by the TSiK (Central Executive Committee) of the USSR.
The section on the show trials has seen a subtle shift in focus: Seeking a way out of the crisis [of the late 1920s], Stalin's Bolshevik regime actively shaped a multifaceted image of the enemy, casting them as "vermin," "kulaks," and "saboteurs."[. ..]In the second half of the 1930s, when Stalin began to fight against political opposition, the show trials praxis resumed.This time, senior officials of the party who had demonstrated anti-Stalin attitudes were in the dock.
What used to be "the main mastermind of the mass repression" in the temporary exposition has thus become "Stalin's Bolshevik regime" in the permanent one.The former discussed the trials' victims as follows: "Under the pressure of constant interrogations, intimidation, threats of reprisals against their families, and promises of being able to remain alive, the accused admitted their 'guilt.'"The latter presents them slightly differently: "The defendants were wrongfully accused of liaisons with foreign services, preparations for interventions against the USSR [. ..] and other offenses." The Great Purge section is more straightforward.Documents proving Stalin's approval of the repression and his involvement in its planning are on display here.The information display explains that mass repression was "carefully planned and centrally executed in accordance with the decision of the Politburo, under Joseph Stalin's direct command.These operations were intended by the highest Party ranks to destroy the potential 'fifth column'--that is, internal enemies--as the threat of war grew."Even here, however, the emphasis is somewhat shifted toward the Politburo and his Party comrades; moreover, an attempt to rationalize the terror is visible, perhaps against the exhibitors' intentions.
Overall, the permanent exposition's representation of Stalin's role in the repression is perhaps less didactic than the temporary exposition's, but it is also much less accusatory.This might reflect an attempt of the curators to depart from the temporary exposition's setup, in which, as seen by Hardy (2020, 295), "a select few" bear all the blame.But as a result, Stalin has been somewhat eclipsed by the country's repressive political system.Ultimately, this is an adequate reflection of the exposition concept note (Bulgakov 2016), which mentions the dictator only a few times.Aside from several cliché-like phrases ("Stalinist repression," "Stalinist camps"), there is only one mention of him: "The camp--as a social phenomenon--best suited the realization of the aims and goals of the internal colonization of the country, without which Stalin and his circles could not imagine carrying out their historical mission" (Bulgakov 2016, 8).
It must be noted that Romanov (personal communication 2021) disagrees with this observation.According to him, the figure of Stalin is much more present in the permanent exposition than it was in the temporary one.Having listened to critics of the 2015 exposition who pointed out that mentions of Stalin were excessive in some parts of it and insufficient in others, the GHM changed the plans for the permanent exposition accordingly.However, as a vivid example of Stalin's prominent presence in the museum Romanov names the reworked "Great Purge" hall, which was opened to the public only in mid-July 2021 (in other words, this part of the exposition looked different at the time of this research).

Victims
The second memory boom placed victims at the center of the narrative about the past.In the memory museum, this assumed the form of including in the exposition the names and faces of individuals as well as their stories.In such museums, "events are narrated from a victim's stand-point" (Khlevnyuk 2018, 124).A museum's walls are often covered with photographs; video testimonies and audio recordings of people's stories and lists of victims are also frequently used as exposition elements.At the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, there is a Tower of Faces, with photographs of those murdered at the Eishyshok Shtetl (today in Lithuania); moreover, upon entering the museum, each visitor receives a victim's ID and can follow his or her fate through the exposition.At the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center in Rwanda, photographs of the 1994 genocide's victims "are loosely clipped to wires and are often taken by visitors who know the individual or who are reminded by the photo of a lost loved one" (Sodaro 2018, 100).In Amy Sodaro's words, "this common memorial museum trope is intended to restore individuality, humanity, and vitality to those who were killed" (Sodaro 2018, 100).
When it comes to Soviet political repression, the distinction between perpetrators and victims is not always easy to define.The worst perpetrators often became victims of the repressive regime themselves, and victims could act as its informants.The GHM seeks to deal with this issue by departing from the "museum of victims" perspective.The "museum of redemption" perspective outlined by the museum development guide allows one, the document argues, to focus on "personal responsibility" for repression (Larichev, 2014, 12).Rather similarly, the 2014 exposition concept note states that the museum's narrative "should lead one to the idea of the impermissibility of such phenomena [as the Gulag] and to understanding everyone's personal responsibility for preventing them from happening again" (Galkova 2014, 1).Yet, the document emphasizes the importance of victims' personal stories in the exposition, choosing "humans in extreme conditions" as a key theme (Galkova 2014, 4).One proposition deserves a separate mention: "Especially emphasized should be situations of passive or coerced confession as well as forced approval of the regime, prompting the viewer to think about how and when complicity in a crime begins" (Galkova 2014, 4).This approach brings to mind Boris Yeltsin's reconciliation attempts in the late 1990s, aimed at achieving concord "but without encouraging historical amnesia" (Smith 2002, 179).A focus on victims, in a situation where victims and perpetrators are at least partially intertwined, would risk leading to disagreement and conflict.A "redemption discourse" and an emphasis on individual responsibility are presumably meant to offer a uniting, rather than dividing perspective.
What manifestation did this conception acquire in the temporary exposition?Overall, it seems to have acted as a thread connecting the beginning of the exhibition with its end.At the beginning, one encountered the above-mentioned eclipse metaphor, which acknowledged Stalin's crucial role in organizing repressive campaigns but ultimately dispersed the blame for the repression onto all of society.At the end, one could enter a reconstruction of an investigator's office.Containing vaults with the files of those arrested and sentenced to imprisonment or execution, this display encouraged participation: visitors could sit down at the investigator's table and acquaint themselves with individual victims' stories.One could wonder what the rationale behind choosing to present these stories through a perpetrator's eyes (rather than installing a "reflection room" or an audio witness space, more typical of a memory museum) might be (cf.Hardy 2020), but the conceptual documents discussed above contextualize it well enough.
While victims were visibly present in the temporary exposition, this presence reminded of staffage figures in landscape painting; that is, it felt somewhat secondary and decorative.There was a room in which video testimonies were screened as well as a digital "family album" intended first and foremost for children: one could "leaf through" it and discover people's stories.However, the videos alternated very quickly, and the noise from other parts of the exposition grew over victims' voices.There was also a screen onto which a list of repressed people was projected; a neighboring screen showed photographs of individual victims, with basic information about them.In a separate room, light boxes with Gulag objects were installed.Rag masks, with holes only for the eyes and mouths, served to protect inmates from extreme frosts.Letters written on shreds of cloth were delivered to inmates' loved ones in the most inconceivable ways (see Tchouikina 2015 for an analysis of a Memorial Society exhibition on the topic).This beautiful presentation, however, hardly transcended its own affective esthetics: details about the objects and their creators/owners were provided by tablet computers on the other side of the room.The viewing of these light boxes was supplied with musical accompaniment.Alfred Schnittke's Three Sacred Hymns and Samuel Barber's Agnus Dei, playing consecutively, felt appropriate.Yet, these compositions, both rooted in the Christian tradition, effectively ignored other categories of victims (Khlevnyuk 2019b).
The representation of victims in the permanent exposition has some distinct features.The concept note that provided the foundation for it states the following: Because the history of the USSR is perceived by [Russian] society in an ambivalent manner and because there are various interpretations of Soviet history, Russia's past will be presented from the anthropological perspective: at the center of the new exposition will be the individual and the human factor of violence.(Bulgakov 2016, 10) While one might struggle to understand the exact meaning of this sentence, the general idea is clear: the repressive system is to be viewed through the prism of human fates.Whether this intention has been brought into reality is another question.One important effect of the new exposition, related to the concept note's placement of "the individual" at its center, has to do with the layout, design, color, and lighting used in the display.The space in which the visitor finds herself is tight and stuffy, with dimmed lighting and halls resembling prison cells, which creates a disorienting effect (Koklina, Korneenko, and Silantieva 2019).The space syntax (Hillier and Tzortzi 2006) of the exposition holds the viewer in tight grip, demanding that she follows the narrow corridor from beginning to end, without any possibility of escape.It is the visitor who ultimately becomes "the individual" placed at the exposition's center.She herself is to feel like a victim.Designed to create an immersive and emotional experience, this technique poses the question of the limits of perception and empathy.On the one hand, "museums and exhibits seek to involve their visitors in ways that carry them beyond the limits of mere spectatorship and engage them as witnesses" (Hansen-Glucklich 2014, 11).On the other hand, can a museum visitor fully understand the Gulag experience by walking through a darkened museum corridor?Can she comprehend, without visiting Kolyma, the inhumane conditions in which Gulag inmates worked (see Dubina 2019)?"An experience of empathy," argues Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich, "may be sufficiently powerful that it encourages the illusion and self-deception of full identification with victims" (2014,142).
Similarly, an installation consisting of shell casings that cover the floor of one of the halls, with photographs of people sentenced to execution demonstrated on a screen nearby, has a strong affective power."This is cool!," exclaimed one of the visitors during the excursion on January 5, 2019, attended by one of the authors.But what is the purpose of this installation beyond an affective immersion into the scale of Soviet repression?Is the Disneyland-like frightening of the visitor the best possible way to make her remember about the Gulag?Are the shell casings not closer to the temporary exposition's investigator office, in that they offer a look at the victims through the perpetrators' eyes?When walking among these shells, one cannot but think about Menashe Kadishman's Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves) at the Jewish Museum Berlin.More than 10,000 faces with open mouths, cut from heavy round iron plates, cover the floor of the ground floor void; a visitor can decide whether to walk over them or not.In addition to being a symbol of Holocaust victims, this installation serves as an encouragement of reflection.The difference between the two installations is perhaps rather subtle, but it becomes much more apparent if one imagines the fire of crematoria in place of Kadishman's face sculptures.
Overall, victims play a more visible role in the permanent exposition than simply staffage.People's stories are told throughout the exhibition, with the help of letters, objects, photos, and artworks.Among them are Aleksandra Tolstoy, the writer's daughter, and Yevfrosiniia Kersnovskaia, whose Gulag drawings are also prominently on display (the gender dimension of the exposition deserves a separate analysis, but remains beyond the scope of this article).In headphones, available here and there, stories of the Gulag are told by actors.The list of victims presented in the temporary exposition on two screens has been transformed into an audio installation: the names of people who perished in the repression are continuously read out.Yet, concluding that "the Gulag is narrated through the accounts of those repressed or their relatives" (Koklina, Korneenko, and Silantieva 2019) still seems an exaggeration.Victims are present, but do they really have a voice?
Survivor testimonies--the key element of memory museums--are notably under-represented.A screen shows only short extracts from video interviews; as of July 2019, the people interviewed were not even named.It is telling for a museum that has a Studio of Visual Anthropology aimed at recording interviews with survivors and their family members (not to mention a massive database of oral history interviews conducted by the Memorial Society).The GHM publishes memoirs, uncovers new stories, and organizes numerous events, but the actual exposition lacks victims' voices.The forced resettlements and deportations, too, are represented in a "silent" installation.Glass displays are filled with earth from Ingushetia, Chechnya, and other places, with no caption or memories of these peoples' representatives (in fact, the museum would benefit from a separate postcolonial analysis).The lack of survivor voices works to historicize the Gulag.As a result, the exposition is poorly connected to the present, making Soviet repression a phenomenon of the past.Then again, the museum development guide, discussing the role of memory museums, argues that their ultimate task consists in reaching a moment when the horrible reality, in which their creation is rooted, will go through several stages of multifaceted reflection and then finally vanish into oblivion as a painful memory, remaining as part of objectively perceived history.(Larichev 2014, 9-10)

Gulag Economics and Forced Labor
The initial exposition concept note contains a clear focus on discussing the Soviet industrial system "based on the usage of forced labor of inmates" (Galkova 2014, 1).Titled "The development of the economics of human lives," the relevant section of the exposition is intended to show not only the role of the Gulag in the Soviet economy, but also the cost paid for it by camp inmates ("destroyed human lives, broken health, the humiliation of people and the destruction of their will") and by society at large ("the corruption of society and the authorities by free labor; the gap in the development of production; the extensive development of the economy; destroyed ecology; predatory expenditure of natural resources") (Galkova 2014, 4).In the suggested design solution, however, there is a nod to the Soviet narrative: "[I]t would be good to juxtapose two sides of reality: the achievements of Soviet industry and the price paid for them" (Galkova 2014, 4).
The representation of forced labor is what the GHM's temporary exposition was criticized for most (Giesen, Zavadski, and Kravchenko 2016;Zavadski 2015).Anke Giesen, Andrei Zavadski, and Artem Kravchenko note (2016) that it recalled the early Soviet representation of prisoner labor as part of the building of socialism: "the exposition's creators have been unable to depart from what Mikhail Gnedosvkii and Nikita Okhotin (Gnedovskii and Okhotin 2011) call "'the heroization of labor achievements and industry-specific pathos.'"Phrases like "The building of canals played a significant role in the formation of Soviet economy" and "In the early 1950s, the Gulag provided 100 percent of platinum, mica, and diamond mining, more than 90 percent of gold mining, over 70 percent of tin, and 40 percent of copper production" defined the temporary exposition.Such facts, provided in abundance, created a specific context that framed the whole section.In this context, the caption saying forced labor created an illusion that it's cheap.In fact, such labor cost the state dearly.The expenses for camp maintenance were not covered by the exploitation of the inmates, which is why the Gulag received sizable subsidies from the state budget.[. ..]With the prime costs of camp produce being high, its quality invariably remained low read almost as a reproach of the inmates who did not wish to contribute to the great construction of a bright socialist future (Giesen, Zavadski, and Kravchenko 2016).While the acknowledgment of the forced nature of inmates' labor was present, it drowned in the broader sea of macroeconomic statistics.
The new exposition presents a change of perspective, while its concept note curiously sticks to the previous paradigm.It argues the following: not reappear in the new exposition.The Gulag economics information display ends as follows: "Despite the fact that the prison camp economy was unprofitable, all of the Stalin era's largest construction projects relied on prison labor."In contrast to the temporary exposition, this caption's focus is not on the inmates' feat, but the regime's economic irrationality.A separate section (absent from the temporary exposition) is devoted to "Camp life and survival strategies."Another one deals with the mortality in the Gulag: "Heavy forced labor, high production norms, malnourishment, and unsanitary conditions for prisoners contributed to the high mortality rate in Stalin's camps."While some of the "great socialist construction projects" (the White Sea-Baltic Canal, for example) are portrayed in separate displays, none of the Soviet-textbook-like macroeconomic statistics, prominent in the temporary exposition, made it into the permanent one.

The Gulag and the "Great Patriotic War"
The "main pillar of the post-Soviet-Russian identity" and the key element of the official memory politics (Malinova 2017, 46; see also Koposov 2018;Wijermars 2019), the "Great Patriotic War" was/is barely present in the GHM expositions.According to the first concept note of the museum (Galkova 2014) as well as the museum development guide (Larichev 2014), separate sub-sections of the exposition were to be dedicated to "The Gulag during the war" and "The deportations of peoples." 7The later concept note (Bulgakov 2016) dedicates a section to "Deportations and forced migrations.Special settlements and ethnic exile."Yet, while the war impacted Gulag camp life in multiple ways, in the expositions it had/has a limited presence at most.The war was/is mentioned here and there, but as if shyly, without much detail.The permanent exposition's "Mortality in the Gulag" hall informs the visitor: During the Great Patriotic War, the situation in labor camps got even worse.In 1942In -1943, the mortality rate in the GULAG increased by five times as compared to the pre-war period.The death rate in camps reached its peak in 1942 when an average of 30,000 people died monthly in the GULAG.During the war, over 1 million people perished in Stalin's camps.
There is, however, a separate section on "The postwar Gulag system."Its main information display notes that the victory in the "Great Patriotic War" did not bring "liberation or relief" for the inmates: "On the contrary, the postwar years were marked by an obvious toughening of punitive policy."This exposition's "Special settlements" hall informs that on the war's eve, more than 85,000 people belonging to the so-called "anti-Soviet element" were evicted from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, western Ukraine, and western Belarus.[. ..]In 1943-1944, socalled "punished nations" also underwent forced resettlement.Many of these ethnic groups lost not just their homeland, but their ethnic autonomy as well.
No explanation as to why this happened (what the regime meant by "anti-Soviet element," for instance) is provided.The tour on January 5, 2019, did mention as a reason "the change of the country's Western borders" and the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; the guide also gave more details about the deportations.But the rationale behind them and its justifiability were hardly discussed.The war remains strongly associated with the victory, and the victory with Stalin, which is why its presence in a Gulag-themed exposition is presumably non grata.

A Mnemonic Actor in A Memory Museum's Clothes
This analysis paints a remarkable picture of the Gulag and Soviet repression at the GHM.The Gulag is presented in the exposition as a fact, and Joseph Stalin's role in it is not denied.However, the dictator's presence turns out to be muted (and this becomes particularly evident if one compares the permanent exposition with the earlier one).On the one hand, his death, after which the Main Directorate of the Camps was disbanded, provides the culmination of the exposition's narrative.On the other hand, Stalin's role is somewhat eclipsed by the country's political system and its key participants.And while showing the whole repressive machine and its many actors, rather than laying the blame on one person (or even a select few), is worth praising, in the context of Russia's official memory politics this decision has consequences.The Gulag is seen not so much as an inherent part of the Stalinist regime, but rather as a result of some sort of collective blindness.Having moved away from the didactic evaluations of the Soviet dictator in the temporary exposition, the permanent one has blurred Stalin's key role in initiating repression.He is simultaneously there and not really there.
Focusing on the Gulag system, the GHM exposition omits political repression that continued in the USSR until its very dissolution, including the often unenviable fates of former Gulag inmates.Covering political repression in contemporary Russia would be too much to ask from a state museum (especially a state museum in a country with memory politics like Russia's), but an institution that seeks to be a "platform for public presentation, studying and discussing [. ..] political unfreedom in the USSR" (GHM 2016, 11) could pay more attention at least to post-Gulag Soviet repression.Instead, the exposition's narrative works to historicize the Gulag: one crosses the line of Stalin's death and finds oneself, presumably, in a completely new reality (is it supposed to be freedom?).The Gulag almost becomes a thing of the past, something to acknowledge . . .and leave behind, together with the abandoned camps in the contemporary photographs presented in the last hall.Stalin, however, is extracted from that past: he remains in the present, as part of the official memory of the "Great Patriotic War," which is probably why the Gulag in war time has been largely bracketed from the narrative.The Gulag's victims are also represented in a way that (inadvertently?)turns repression into a phenomenon of the past.While some have argued that the Gulag is narrated in the museum by way of witness accounts (Koklina, Korneenko, and Silantieva 2019) and, indeed, there are numerous individual stories scattered throughout the exposition--the insufficient number and quality of video testimonies is highly noticeable.More direct voices would actualize the past in the present, bring it closer to the visitor.But they would also potentially encourage questioning this present more.
Russian society is far from a consensus on the Soviet past.How could such a consensus be achieved, if not through an open public conversation?The GULAG History Museum in Moscow has been doing an enormous amount of work to start such a discussion, remaining firmly dedicated to its mission of research and public outreach pertaining to the Gulag.It regularly opens temporary exhibitions; conducts research expeditions; holds lectures, round tables, and other public events; publishes books; and stages theater plays.It has instigated the creation of an Association of Memory Museums in Russia, is involved in activist initiatives, and is carrying out numerous other projects.In sum, its efforts in expanding knowledge about the Gulag and promoting its remembrance can hardly be overemphasized.However, the GHM's exposition does not do enough to raise questions.Instead, it offers its own answers, leaving some of the questions aside.It presents a reconciling version of this part of Soviet history, one that would not raise too many eyebrows on the part of either activists or politicians.The economics section of the temporary exposition is a case in point: following the critique voiced by historians, it underwent a significant change.
Being a state museum and the largest museum in Russia dedicated to Soviet repression, the GHM has to take into account not only the stances of its staff, the memory politics of the authorities, and the opinion of professional historians and civic activists, but also the expectations of society at large, as "there are limits of malleability in the presentation of the cultural/historical material that are imposed by the visions of history that resonate in the discursive field of the target group" (Bernhard and Kubik 2014, 9).Seeking to tell the story of the Gulag to as wide a public as possible, but doing so at a time when positive assessments of Stalin have reached a historic high in the Russian Federation (Levada-Center 2019), the GHM is forced to negotiate, consciously or not, between the roles of memory museum and mnemonic actor (cf.Istoriia GULAGa v muzee 2016 8 ).As a result, it is compelled to emphasize, whenever possible, the contentious status of the Gulag/Stalin topic in Russian society.This latter point can be illustrated by the guided tour attended by one of this article's authors on January 5, 2019: the guide, Aleksei Trubin, referred to Soviet repression as "a serious topic [that is] controversial [neodnoznachnaia] in public opinion."Another, virtual guided tour, attended by both authors on December 24, 2020, is even more telling.The almost two-hour-long session was conducted by Konstantin Andreev, head of the GHM's Educational Department.Stalin was mentioned in the tour only two or three times and only in passing, which is puzzling, considering the nature and length of the tour. 9 The GHM thus finds itself in the role of a mnemonic actor in a memory museum's clothes.This does not mean that the museum receives direct assignments or instructions from the authorities.(Romanov admits that, from time to time, there appear persons, of official standing and not, who demand that some part of the exposition be changed; however, these demands do not influence the museum's work in any way.[personal communication 2021]) 10 But the official memory politics works in more mysterious ways that that.One way it has seemingly affected the GHM exposition has to do with the positioning of Stalin and political repression after the Gulag.In this respect, the museum's narrative corresponds with the official memory of Soviet repression: it presents historical facts about the Gulag accurately, but understates the role of the dictator and Soviet repression beyond the Gulag.Stalin remains firmly in the present: as the leader who won the war.

Notes
1.The term Gulag has different spellings, including "GULag" and "GULAG."While all of them are used in academic literature, we consciously depart in this article from the Soviet acronyms "GULag" and "GULAG" and use "Gulag" to mean both Glavnoe upravlenie lagerei (The Main Directorate of Camps), which existed between 1929/30 and 1960, and, more broadly, "a wider array of penal zones (prisons, labor colonies, special settlements, etc.)" (Khlevniuk 2015, 479) that existed in the Soviet Union.The GULAG History Museum is the institution's official name, which is why, when referring to the museum, we use that acronym.2. We are grateful to Irina Galkova, the author of the first version of the exhibition concept notes (Galkova 2014), for sharing the document with us.We also thank the GULAG History Museum for providing the other two documents (Bulgakov 2016;Larichev 2014).Since their authors (each document had several contributors) are not named in the files, we indicate the authorship by the name of the respective responsible person, as conveyed to us by the GHM. 3. Roman Romanov, personal communication, July 14, 2021, Zoom interview.4. The discussion on differences between history and memory has been going on for over a hundred years (see Erll 2011, 39-45 for a brief overview).Early representatives of memory studies-most notably, Maurice Halbwachs and Pierre Nora--drew a sharp distinction between the two.Other prominent proponents of distinguishing memory from history include Jacques Le Goff, David Lowenthal, and Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi.We generally follow the tendency to view memory "as a broad cover term," and understand "historical reference to the past as one mode of cultural remembering" (Erll 2011, 45, original emphasis).That said, in this article, certain differences between the historical mode of representing the past and the memorial one do play a role. 5. Cf.Oleg Khlevniuk's (2015) article on the indeterminate character of the Gulag's and non-Gulag's boundaries.6.In the introduction to his The History of the GULAG.From Collectivization to the Great Terror, Oleg V. Khlevniuk (2004) writes unequivocally: "The Stalinist penal system was formed and entrenched during the 1930s--more precisely, between 1929 and 1941.Although its foundations had been laid earlier, the years 1929-30 were an important turning point, when the accelerated and intensive formation of Stalinist state structures, including the Gulag, began" (p. 1).Similarly, with regard to the Great Purge, he writes: "Archival documents fully establish Stalin's active and decisive role in making these decisions" (Khlevniuk 2004, 331).7.While deportations and forced migrations in the USSR transcend the time of the Second World War, the war was crucial to the forced resettlement of a number of Soviet peoples (see Polyan 2001).8. See especially comments made by Anatoly Golubovsky.9. Roman Romanov (personal communication 2021) admits that, when it comes to excursions, it is definitely "a deficiency" (nedorabotka), to be fixed now that the GHM has developed a textbook for tour guides.
10. Another influence of the official memory politics, according to Romanov (personal communication 2021), consists in prompting the museum's staff to revise parts of the exposition in order to highlight facts that are presented inaccurately in the dominant public sphere.For instance, he points to the new "Great Purge" hall that opened in mid-July 2021: it now dissects and refutes five most widespread myths about Stalin.See the GHM's Facebook page, at https://facebook.com/gulag museum/posts/4773247072702904, accessed on July 15, 2021.