In another ominous indication of the way things are trending in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, a Gulag Museum is set to reopen with no acknowledgement of the crimes of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Perm-36 museum director Viktor Shmyrov said the “memorial won’t disappear, but the museum has been taken over by other people appointed by the new authorities, who have totally changed the content,” BBC Russian Service reported Wednesday.
“Now it’s a museum about the camp system, but not about political prisoners. They don’t talk about the repressions or about Stalin,” he was quoted as saying.
Arseny Roginsky, president of Russia’s leading human rights group Memorial — which founded the museum two decades ago — said the new management included former prison camp guards, AFP reported.
“The museum’s format is being completely changed,” Roginsky was quoted as saying. “It’s tragic that a museum to Soviet terror will be transformed into a museum to the penal system.”
