Virtual Museum of the Gulag Seized

Depressing and not getting enough notice: masked police recently raided the office of the Russian human rights group Memorial, which has been digitally cataloguing the artifacts and names of those affected by the Soviet Gulag. The police took drives containing biographical information on more than 50,000 victims of Stalinist repression and over 10,000 digital photographs, among other unique archival documents. We worked with Memorial on our Gulag history project. (Thanks to Elena Razlogova for bringing this to my attention.)

Comments

David Kemper says:

This is indeed a very sad story. What about the original documents and artifacts? Are they still safe? Thank you for sharing this news with us.

Dan Cohen says:

What seems difficult to reproduce here is the database of victims, which I think is the result of a lot of work by Memorial. I believe the original artifacts are scattered across the country; what was taken were the digital photos. I’m hopeful other blog readers can fill in some of the details.

Glasnost dies a squirming, shameful death! Sad.

Mustove says:

Out-of-country remote daily backups. Always a “must” for projects such as this.

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