Russian Sites of Conscience Network

Building an Anti-Totalitarian Culture
Led by the Gulag Museum at Perm-36, this network works with museums and historic sites in Russia and the former Soviet Union to raise public awareness of the history and consequences of totalitarianism, and actively engage citizens in addressing threats to Russian democracy today.
Read about the latest activities of the network here.

Participants

Kolyma Gulag Museum
Contact: Ivan Panikarov, Director
KOLYMA GULAG MUSEUM
P.O. Box 4
Yagodnoye, Magadan, 686 230, Russia
Tel: +7-413-432-2545
Fax +7-413-432-3113
E-mail: memo@ya.magadan.su
Website: www.lagerkolyma.narod.ru/main.htm

The “Dalnostroy” Consortium, which once included the North-East territory of Russia, had been the main supplier of gold in Russia for many years. Today, as in the past, this entire territory is called Kolyma. It was here in the 1930s and ‘50s that hundreds of thousands of prisoners worked under inhuman conditions for the “welfare” of the Motherland. Starting in 1989, citizens dedicated to preserving the memory of this system began collecting artifacts – such as kettles, pickaxes, and other tools of hard labor – from the Knife prison camp near Orkutan village. This effort gave rise to the Kolyma Gulag Museum, which now houses thousands of photographs and artifacts of daily camp life, including original prisoner files, camp newspapers, drawings and letters from former prisoners that are used to tell the stories of those who lived, worked, loved, hoped and died in the Kolyma camps.

Krasnoyarsk Museum Center
Contact: Valentina Bondareva, Deputy Director
Mira Square, 1
Krasnoyarsk, 660 097, Russia
Tel: +7-839-123-9303
E-mail: valentina@mira1.ru
Website: www.russianmuseums.info/M1388

A branch of the central Lenin Museum in Moscow, the Krasnoyarsk Museum Center works with cultural and educational institutions around the Krasnoyarsk region to interpret the region’s history and promote the work of local artists. The Museum has hosted several powerful exhibits raising contemporary issues, such as techniques used by the Russian State to erase the memory of political prisoners from the history and social conscience of the nation.

Mednoe Memorial Complex
Contact: Elena Obrastsova, Executive Director
Kalinin region, Mednoe
Tver, Tver Oblast, 170521, Russia
Tel: +7-822-388-384
E-mail: e.obrazcova@mail.ru
Website: www.gulagmuseum.org/museums/museum_15/kartochka_eng.htm

In Mednoe, a town in the Tver region north of Moscow, Soviet Communist Secret Police (NKVD) created mass graves in a local forest where they buried thousands of executed prisoners. Many of these people were Russians arrested in the wake of a new law prohibiting association with foreigners, viewed as threats to national security. Others were Polish soldiers who surrendered voluntarily to the Russian army believing that they were under no threat. Today, the Mednoe Memorial Complex delves into this intricate history and the difficult experiences of individuals under totalitarian regimes by providing memorial exhibits, public events, and activities that commemorate the victims and explore issues of political repression.

Museum of the History of Political Repression Tomsk NKVD Prison
Contact: Vasiliy Khanevich, Museum Chief
Lenin Av. 44
Tomsk, 634 050, Russia
Tel: +7-382-251-6133
E-mail: borel@mail.tomsknet.ru

The Museum of the History of Political Repression Tomsk NKVD Prison is located in the former building of the Tomsk OGPU-NKVD, which operated as a secret prison from 1923 to 1944. Exhibits display restored and reconstructed cells for political prisoners, a detective’s office/interrogation room, the prison hallway and other elements of this clandestine prison from the 1930s. These exhibits illustrate the history of political repression in the Tomsk region and the entire USSR throughout the long-standing totalitarian regime. In front of the Museum, monuments in Memory Square commemorate the Tomsk victims of political terror. The Museum’s mission is to reveal the horrible history of terror and the nation’s totalitarian past, to commemorate innocent victims, and to educate youth on the values of democracy and human rights.

State Museum of the Political History of Russia
Contact: Evgeniy Artemov, Director
Kuybyshev Str. 2-4
St. Petersburg, 197 046, Russia
Tel: +7-812-233-7048
Fax: +7-812-233 73 00
E-mail: polithist@cards.lanck.net
Website: www.museum.ru/Museum/polit_hist/default.htm

Founded in 1919, this former Bolshevik headquarters interprets the history of class struggle in Russia and Europe. The mission of the State Museum is to nurture in its citizens a sense of social responsibility for the future development of Russia as a democratic state. Over the past 15 years, the State Museum has studied and interpreted the history of totalitarianism under Stalin, as well as the history of the gulag system and dissident resistance to Communism. The State Museum oversees four branches: the Museum Center for Childhood Education and the Police History Museum in St. Petersburg, and the “Mednoe” and “Katyn” Memorial Complexes that commemorate victims of political repression.