This week, I was invited to present the book “Object of Surveillance”, in which the long-term surveillance of Academician Sakharov by the KGB is abundantly documented with comments, photographs and accompanying articles. Since the event will be held at the Gulag History Museum, I decided to take the opportunity to see the exhibition. I knew that the museum was founded in 2001, I met the books he published but I never entered. It seemed to me that at that time such a museum for me contained nothing new, since I already knew a lot about GULAG, read a lot of memoirs, did research, saw a number of exhibitions.
But what was my surprise when I reached the building on 1st Samotechny Lane! The sudden discovery of an elegant complex with a gate and a courtyard among typical buildings surprised me: there are not many modern architectural designs of this quality in Moscow. A four-storey red-brick house with a large plot, a solid entrance, high-quality materials – and this is not a private Garage and GES-2, but a Moscow municipal museum? In 2011, when the question arose of supplying the Gulag Museum with a new building instead of the old one located on Petrovka, it turned out that the city real estate department, by order of the Moscow government, allocated to it the dormitory of the old metro building. The old, 1906 building was thought to be simply repaired at minimal cost. However, Sergei Kapkov, head of the cultural department at the time, and Roman Romanov, director of the Museum, decided to renovate the building in a much more radical way, without going over budget. The architects of the KONTORA office, Igor Aparin and Dmitry Baryudin, who began their careers at that time, undertook the reconstruction, which appeared with an unusual “hard style” to decorate the space. They covered the three facades of the house with oxidized copper sheets due to the color change with the effect of time. Now the shade is exactly as intended: natural aging is felt in the color and texture of the natural material. And the building looks sad and solemn and alive at the same time. Inside, the room was “carved” into the floor, the architects decided to recreate a concise space in which the natural brick of the walls, the metal of the channels and the strict geometry of the stairs were preserved. The light comes from the walls, resembling the red fire of torches.
As early as 2015, the exposition of the new museum began with real doors brought from camps, colonies, prisons and transfers. These doors, built with their real textures like iron, wood, plywood, shabby or front doors, circles of hell, like a prison courtyard, like a labyrinth of cells and niches, were the first objects of the exhibition.
And in 2018, the fair was updated with the addition of new exhibits. There are very few objects left from the Gulag camps, and there is a problem with the documents, they were deliberately destroyed, hidden, so the museum staff put a lot of effort into searching for real things and evidence. The result is the most modern technologies – video and audio recordings, interactive maps, diagrams, VR, with the most ordinary household items – damned children’s socks, ladles and spoons made of tin cans, letters and postcards, theatrical programs of the camp amateur performances and the remnants of worker gloves. Dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Great Terror (1937-1938), the floor of the room is covered with thousands of empty casings in memory of the 700,000 people who were executed.
The new exhibition also featured theatrical elements: 16 exclusive stories are presented in showcases with things about their heroes, and in the headphones you can hear the memories of the prisoners suppressed in various years, voiced by actors Yevgeny Mironov, Maxim. Vitorgan, Liya Akhedzhakova, Chulpan Khamatova. I managed to listen to one of these stories – the most prosperous, I think – and the inscription on the window surprised me: “Alexandra Tolstaya.”
During the First World War, his executioner, the beloved daughter of his faithful friend Alexandra Lvovna Leo Tolstoy, led the Red Cross detachment. He was awarded two George’s Crosses and received the rank of colonel. In December 1917, he was forced to return to Moscow, as it seemed unsafe and pointless to join the revolutionary-minded army. He lived in Yasnaya Polyana. I looked at the beehive. He buried his mother, tried to save his father’s archive. He was appointed guardian of the property in Yasnaya Polyana. He was arrested in 1919. He was accused of counter-revolutionary activities and was sentenced to three years in the first Soviet concentration camp created on the territory of the Moscow Novospassky Monastery. At the trial, he was asked if he understood why he was being punished. “Yes,” he replied, for the samovar. Alexandra Lvovna gave tea to acquaintances gathered in the apartment of the Tolstoy Society, among whom were those who did not join the new order. “I just tried to make them feel comfortable in my apartment. Then a friend of mine described my underground activities with a witty poem: “Stifle your civic fire In a country with a brave girl They put him in a cramped dungeon To build a samovar.
Sitting in the cell, he kept diaries and wrote letters to Lenin, hiding the notebook behind a chipped stove tile – it was searched and anything not allowed was taken away. The lines from his letter are as follows: “My father, whose views I had openly condemned the tsarist government and still remained free even then… I do not hide that I am not a supporter of Bolshevism… But I never opposed and will not actively oppose the Soviet government, I have never been involved in politics and have never been a member of any party. .. Send me abroad if I hurt Russia. If I am harmful even there, then, recognizing the right of one person to take the life of another, shoot me as a harmful member of the Soviet Republic. But don’t force me to take the life of a parasite trapped between four walls with prostitutes, thieves, bandits.”
They stood up for him, and after several months in prison the former Countess Tolstaya was nevertheless released. And then there was the work to create a museum, a school for peasant children, but it all came to an end when the school teachers began to demand mandatory anti-religious propaganda. In 1929, Tolstaya, believing that he could not stand the violation of freedom of conscience, took advantage of the invitation from Japan to lecture, received permission to leave and did not return to his homeland. Before leaving, he said goodbye to Yasnaya Polyana at night and realized that he would never see again the house, the garden, the pond, everything that connected him to his childhood memory, to his parents, to his ideals.
The current director of the Gulag Museum, Roman Romanov, is a trained psychologist. He believes that people’s collective traumas, the memory of family traumas should definitely be talked about, they should not be pushed into the subconscious that they started their destructive work, but should be brought to the level of public and personal understanding and what this museum is doing using all the tools available today.
An activity so equipped with multimedia technology can even cause bewilderment – the tragic facts, the terrible evidence of humiliation of dignity and physical suffering, the moral burden of what has been endured, the colossal scale of terror are so significant in themselves that it is necessary to strengthen the present. a painful impression with the help of visualization and theatricalization? But perhaps it is necessary today. Victims and witnesses leave, and with them the direct memory, which is not already clearly fixed in the cultural consciousness, is lost, the immediacy of impressions disappears, history turns into a myth, it is rolled by public indifference, and powerful means are needed to return emotions. To relive the tragic past. And it is clear that a new mode of display that appeals to emotions and images is needed to preserve not only knowledge but also sympathy for the national tragedy. And it’s working.
There are many young people in the museum. Young employees. Young visitors.
The Gulag History Museum is not just an exhibition, it is a whole ecosystem, lectures and conversations, excursions and exhibitions, current data, searches and new discoveries that attract artists, theater directors, playwrights, writers, journalists and historians. memory locations. All in all, this is a great space. And if you haven’t been there yet, definitely go.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.