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Moscow museum removes part of exhibition on Soviet repressions – photos

Wednesday, 15 January 2025, 14:35
Moscow museum removes part of exhibition on Soviet repressions – photos
The exhibition on Soviet repressions. Photo: Ksenia Basilashvili / Telegram

A Moscow museum has altered its exhibition on the history of Moscow, removing part of a section that covered Soviet repressions further to a request from the management.

Source: journalist Ksenia Basilashvili on Telegram

Details: Basilashvili noted that she had previously written about the Museum of Moscow's new exhibition, The History of Moscow, which was "put together with great professionalism and love". However, she has recently noticed changes in the exhibition.

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Quote from Ksenia Basilashvili: "The first part of the exhibition, The History of Moscow, was supposed to end with the theme of repression. Documents and belongings of victims of the repressions had been found in the museum's collection… The curators asked staff from the Gulag History Museum to write the texts for this section as well as labels for the exhibits. Only scientific information – facts, figures, dates. The research council of the Museum of Moscow reviewed and approved everything. But then someone demanded that the texts be corrected, and shortly afterwards there was a demand to remove not only the texts but the entire section on Repression that had been prepared at that time."

 
This is how the exhibition looked after the installation.
Photo: Ksenia Basilashvili / Telegram

More details: Basilashvili posted two photographs showing the changes in the exhibition: the first one was taken during its installation, and the second was taken on 20 December after the description of the Repression section had been taken down.

Quote from Ksenia Basilashvili: "The items from the House on the Embankment [an elite apartment building in central Moscow, many of whose residents were executed in Stalin's purges – ed.] are now just part of the 1930s interiors [section]. There is no Repression section. Or maybe there were no repressions at all?"

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And this is what it looks like after the changes
Photo: Ksenia Basilashvili / Telegram

Background: Earlier, Basilashvili had reported that the previous director of the Gulag History Museum, Roman Romanov, had been dismissed after the museum was closed for three months, allegedly due to "fire safety violations". He was replaced by Anna Trapkova, director of the Museum of Moscow.

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