Press Release, 20 February 2026

Photo: Inside the Gulag History Museum / Photo by Ivan Vodopyanov, Kommersant

The Bureau of the Moscow branch of the Yabloko party considers the decision to effectively liquidate the exhibition of the Gulag History Museum and replace it with a new museum to be a mockery of the memory of the victims of political repression. This is stated in a statement by the Bureau of the Moscow branch of Yabloko, published on 20 February.

On 20 February it was reported that the Gulag History Museum in Moscow, which was closed on formal grounds at the end of 2024 under a pretext of for renovation, was to be transformed into a Museum of Memory of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People during WWII. Following this announcement, Yabloko party Chairman Nikolai Rybakov issued a statement in which he stressed that “we have witnessed yet another step in the deliberate dismantling of national memory”.

The Bureau of the Moscow branch of the Yabloko party issued a special statement criticising the decision taken by the authorities:

“The Gulag Museum is a place that preserves the memory of the millions of people who fell victim to state terror — the memory of the crimes committed by the authorities against their own people.

Replacing this subject with a different exhibition — even one devoted to the crimes of Nazism — means displacing the conversation about repression within the country. The crimes of the Nazi regime must not become a pretext for the destruction of the memory of the crimes of the Stalinist regime. One does not cancel out the other.

Moreover, the effective liquidation of the existing museum reveals the cynical attitude of the Moscow authorities towards the city’s residents. In the autumn of 2024, when the work of the Gulag History Museum was abruptly terminated, the Department of Culture announced that this had occurred due to fire safety requirements, on the grounds that a metro ventilation chamber was located on the museum’s premises and that ‘fire and smoke could adversely affect the functioning of the Moscow Metro ventilation system.’

It is plain that the new institution being established in place of the Gulag History Museum will face the same problem, though the Moscow Government appears no longer to be troubled by this.

We have no doubt: the decision to liquidate the Gulag History Museum is politically motivated. Its purpose is to remove from public discourse the question of the state’s responsibility for political repression.

We note with regret that re-Stalinisation has continued in Moscow and across the country in recent years — the revival of the cult of personality of Joseph Stalin and the suppression of the facts concerning the crimes of the Soviet system against its own citizens. In Moscow, this tendency has manifested itself in the inscription of a line from the Stalinist anthem on the wall of the Kurskaya metro station pavilion, the placement of a bas-relief depicting Stalin in the passage of the Taganskaya metro station, and the dismantling of the Wall of Memory for the Victims of Political Repression in the Muzeon Park.

The alteration of the exhibition and the ideological reorientation of the Gulag History Museum represent yet another link in this chain. These are alarming precedents that must be halted; instead, action must be taken in the opposite direction — providing an objective assessment of historical facts, however uncomfortable they may be.

The Bureau of Moscow Yabloko demands that the Moscow Government preserve the independent museum and a full exhibition dedicated to the history of the Gulag and of political repression.

The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation is obliged to ensure open public and professional discussion of the museum’s future and put an end to the practices of substituting and displacing historical memory.

Historical memory is not an instrument of current political expediency. It is a matter of the state’s responsibility to its citizens.”