Anna Trapkova. Photo: mos.ru
The Moscow city government has appointed a new director for the Gulag History Museum, which was forced to close its doors in November in what was widely seen as a Kremlin-backed move to cement its control over Russia’s only state museum dedicated to Stalin’s victims, the Moskva news agency reported on Monday.
The current director of the Museum of Moscow, Anna Trapkova, will take over from former Gulag Museum head Roman Romanov on 21 January, Moskva reported, adding that she had readily accepted the offer, which she called “a great responsibility and a serious challenge”.
The appointment of Trapkova confirms that Romanov, who has headed the Gulag History Museum since 2012, was either dismissed or resigned from his post, though as he has not spoken to the media since the museum’s sudden closure in November after an inspection revealed alleged fire safety violations, the circumstances around his exit remain unclear.
While Moscow’s Culture Department said at the time that the museum would reopen “after all potential threats have been fully eliminated”, there has been no update from the museum’s management or the Moscow authorities since then, and the museum remains closed to the public.
The Moscow Times reported in November that the museum’s closure was a politically-motivated move ordered by “high-ranking Kremlin officials and Russia’s security services” and that the alleged safety violations were a “smokescreen”.
Russian journalist Ksenia Korobeynikova described Trapkova’s principal task in her new role as being to “reach a compromise” between the institution and the authorities and advised her that the museum would also have to “rethink its concept and its permanent exhibition”.
