A visitor to the Butovo Shooting Range outside Moscow, where 20,762 people were executed during Stalin’s Great Terror in 1937-1938. Photo: EPA-EFE / MAXIM SHIPENKOV
The Museum of Moscow, which has documented the Russian capital’s history since 1896, has removed a section of its exhibit on Soviet-era repressions amid external pressure, Russian journalist Ksenia Basilashvili reported on Tuesday.
According to Basilashvili, the History of Moscow exhibition originally included a section on the Shakhty Trial, the first major show trial under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, as well as on the residents of Moscow’s elite House on the Embankment, many of whose residents were arrested and executed during Stalin’s Great Purge.
The texts for the Repressions section, which had been written by employees of the Gulag History Museum and approved by the Museum of Moscow’s academic council, were first modified when a request to change them came “from somewhere outside” before subsequently being completely removed, Basilashvili said.
“Soon after, a demand appeared — not just to remove the texts, but also the entire, fully prepared Repressions section altogether”, she added, sharing one photo of the section with the texts in place during the exhibition’s installation and a second from December after the texts were removed.
The Museum of Moscow describes the exhibition as showcasing the “life and daily routines of Muscovites across different eras, as well as the city’s architecture, culture and development” from Iron Age settlements along the Moskva River to World War II.
On Monday, it was announced that current Museum of Moscow director Anna Trapkova would take over from the long-serving Roman Romanov as director of the Gulag History Museum, the sole state-run museum in Russia devoted to the victims of Soviet terror, which was forced to close its doors indefinitely in November in what appeared to be the authorities tightening their grip on how 20th century Russian history is discussed in the country.
