Museum of the Club ‘On the Path of Remembrance’

The Museum was founded in 2000 on the initiative of the Children’s Club of Local Lore and History ‘On the Path of Remembrance’. It occupies 48m 2 in the municipal venue ‘Arts and Leisure Centre of the Rural Settlement Vis’ and counts as a branch of the Museum of Local Lore and History of the town of Sosnogorsk. The Museum, the exhibition and all displays were designed by members of the Club.

The permanent exhibition ‘On the Path of Repression’ opened in 2002 and is dedicated to the history of the Gulag in Sosnogorsk District. It consists of documents, photographs and personal belongings of the local population from the Museum’s collection and exhibits that have been lent to the exhibition. The exhibition has also been on display in Sosnogorsk and Syktyvkar.

The research activities of Club members resulted in the creation of several temporary exhibitions: ‘Time backwards’ (about people who live and have lived in Vis, about victims of repression and camp guards), ‘History in Drawings. Past, Present, Future’, ‘Family Album’ (based on a photo album of the 1940s and 1950s with photos of the officers of the camps on Vis territory), ‘Perspectives of Vis and Camps of the Gulag.’ The Museum also conducts thematic excursions.

The Museum’s collection is growing steadily, as Club members regularly go on expeditions, as well as collecting potential exhibits from inhabitants of Vis and nearby villages. The collection includes personal belongings, photographs and documents, including a map of the Forced Labour Camps in the District Vis-Glush from 1952, original documents of the administration of the Pechora building-site of the People’s Commissariat for Inner Affairs (NKVD) of USSR (more than 250 items), as well as copies of material from State archives.

The Club members participate in the republic-wide contest ‘Komi, our Fatherland’.