Visualizations of Soviet Repression and the Gulag in Russian Museums: Common Exhibition Models

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the conceptual approaches and exhibition designs used by Russian museums for exhibitions on the Soviet terror. Using empirical data from 145 museums researched over 16 years, the author develops a typology of common models of visualization. At the center of this typology is an innovative approach to the representation of the “hero–victim–villain” triad, which is pivotal to exhibitions focusing on humanitarian disasters. The author argues that the way Russian museums use this triad is the main reason for the inadequacy of the majority of Russian museum exhibitions dedicated to the terror.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Alexander Daniel and Tatyana Morgacheva for their support, and Iryna Zavadskaya, Josephine von Zitzewitz, and Kirsty Falconer for translating and editing.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The descriptions, not just of museums, but also other “sites of memory,” such as burial sites, monuments, and traces left by the Gulag in different landscapes, can be found on www.gulagmuseum.org. Materials collected as part of the project are held in the archive of the Research and Information Centre “Memorial.”

2. See Flige (2011).

3. Just two examples separated by more than two decades: (1) the temporary exhibition “Art in the Gulag: Both Sides of the Prison Door,” created by Veniamin Iofe and based on the opposition of two images of the camp—“from outside” and “from inside” (Museum of Political History, Saint Petersburg, 1995); (2) the traveling exhibition Believe the Things That Have Dried, created by Nadezhda Pantiulina and artist Petr Pasternak, exhibited in various museums in Moscow and Perm in 2017–2020. It shows the history of the Solovetskii camp through the leaves of a herbarium which acts as a scientific source, a symbol of memory, and an archival document.

4. Ogonek magazine, No. 41, 1988.

5. The technique “face and name” in exhibitions about victims of humanitarian disasters is successfully used around the globe; for example: The Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, USA); Museu Memorial de l’Exili (Spain); Museo de las Memorias: Dictadura y Derechos Humanos (Paraguay).

6. One example: in Komi Republic, geologist Arkadii Galkin organized “Memorial Ukhta-Pechora,” a coalition involving six local museums—in Vorkuta, Inta, Pechora, Emva, Ukhta, and Troitsko-Pechorsk.

7. Also see Vladislav Straf’s article in this special issue: “Local Initiatives: The Creation of Gulag Memorial Museums in post-Soviet Russia.”

8. “I was strictly forbidden to take an interest in this topic. My mother stopped all attempts at conversation.” Interview with N.S. Kruk, in “Gorod 812,” October 14, 2019. https://gorod-812.ru/glavnyim-byilo-sledstvennoe-delo-moego-ottsa/ “I never talked [about my father] … because there was some kind of inner prohibition. In all my life I pronounced his name only twice.” Interview with G.A. Shtein. July 20, 2004. Archive of RIC “Memorial.” “[M]y father, as well as my grandfather, were only ever mentioned in hushed tones in our family. And when we asked questions, we were always shushed: ‘Quiet! And keep your mouths shut!’” N.E. Voronina, “Tikhon Mikhailovich Chernianskii i ego sem’ia,” Leningradskii martirolog: Kniga pamiati zhertv politicheskikh repressii, St Petersburg: Rossiiskaia natsional’naia biblioteka, vol. 6.

9. These are generalized examples. For similar stories that describe specific exhibits, please see The Virtual Gulag Museum website, www.gulagmuseum.org.

10. For more on the exhibitions about the Gulag in museums of local lore, see Gavrilova (forthcoming).

11. Caricature in relation to the terror is extremely rarely seen in Russian museums; on the other hand, museums in the Baltic countries and Poland often create an “image of the villain” by “demonizing” the enemy through bodily deformities. See, e.g., The Year 1941 by Gražina Čėsnaitė, depicting Stalin as a huge ugly bird carrying in its claws a cage with people (Kaunas Museum of Exile and Resistance).

12. The album by Efrosinia Kersnovskaya titled How Much is a Person Worth?, a memoir written in the margins of 680 drawings, was first published in 1990 and soon became a bestseller of Gulag literature. Reproductions are constantly exhibited in various museums.

13. On the recent government takeover of the Perm-36 museum, see Giesen (2019).