Commemorative practices of memorial museums. Experience of the Gulag History Museum

Abstract

The author of this article mainly focuses on identifying, analyzing, and summarizing commemorative practices of Russian memorial museums in the context of the implementation of the State Policy Concept for Perpetuating the Memory of Victims of Political Repression. The problem of commemoration in the activities of Russian memorial museums is among the little-studied issues, although this group of museums, which are institutions of a new type, is a significant resource for the functioning of commemoration as a socio-cultural phenomenon. The subject of the study is commemorative practice in the exposition, exhibition, educational, and public activities of the State Gulag History Museum and other memorial museums, whose commemorative potential is primarily aimed at perpetuating the memory of victims of political repression. The sources used in this work include published materials on the activities of the Association of Memory Museums in Russia, annual reports of the Memory Fund and the Gulag History Museum, articles of the newspaper 30 Oktyabrya, as well as information and analytical literature on museum commemorative projects. The methodological basis of the research includes new cognitive strategies formulated in the concept of the lieux de mémoire or sites of memory of the French historian P. Nora, who defined sites of memory as a form of existence of commemorative consciousness in history. The article concludes that the museum commemoration possesses a high educational and pedagogic potential, the implementation of which makes it possible to solve important moral and socio-cultural tasks that the society is facing.

Keywords

• memorial museums
• commemorative practices
• gulag history museum
• memory fund
• victims of political repression