VIRTUAL GULAG MUSEUM
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November 4, 2006

On the “Conference on the Soviet Gulag: Its History and Legacy” at Harvard University was prepared and presented the topic “Virtual Museum of Gulag: distance and image” by I.Flige and A.Daniel.

 

September 4-10, 2006

International Seminar of the culture of memory. In what kind of way other European societies save its experience of total regimes of 20th century? (Centre of Kchijova, Poland). I.Flige has leaded the discussion with the topic: “What does it mean: exhibit of Gulag” based on the material of exploration «Вещи Гулага» (Items from the Gulag, From the image to the biography).

 

8-11.06.2006

An International Conference “Visions after the Fall: Museums, Archives and Cinema in Reshaping Popular Perceptions of the Socialist Past” took place in Budapest on 8th -11th June.

Irina Flige presented a detailed paper on the “Virtual Gulag Museum” project, and visual material was shown and discussed.

 

19.05.2006

“The Necropolis of the Gulag”, a meeting of experts, took place at St Petersburg’s European University, under the aegis of St Petersburg’s General Consulates.

The meeting was conducted by RIC “Memorial” together with St Petersburg’s European university, with the participation of the General Consulates of the Republics of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the Ukraine.

Official representatives of independent states of Eastern Europe and Central Asia; experts on the history and search for mass-burial places and camp cemeteries from these countries; representatives of national state institutes and centres for the preservation of memory (Minister Andzhei Pshevoznik from the Council for the Preservation of the Remembrance of Conflict and Martyrdom in Poland; the Director of the Memorial Department of the Lithuanian Resistance and Genocide Remembrance Centre, Dzintare Yakubonene; Professor Kheinriks Strodts from the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, and other experts) took part in the meeting.

 

10-13.05.2006

The fourth seminar on places of remembrance in Kshizhova (Poland) took place there from 10.05. to 13.05.2006. It was dedicated to the condition of places of remembrance in the states of Central and Central-Eastern Europe, including Germany. The aim of the seminar was the discussion and comparison, in context, of the peculiarities of public experience of various themes linked with crimes and arbitrariness.

During the course of the seminar, on the 12th May, Irina Flige gave a presentation on the Virtual Gulag Museum.

The participants from the Ukraine presented a report on the history of the liberation movement, the repressions, the Catacomb Church, the Famine and places of remembrance in the Ukraine.

 

10-13.05.2006

Meeting of experts entitled “The Virtual Gulag Museum: concept and content”

The meeting took place in the offices of RIC “Memorial” and was dedicated to:

  1. The discussion of forms and prospects of work with the museum community;
  2. The working out of scientific principles and techniques for collecting, preserving and presenting the museum collection of the Virtual Gulag Museum;
  3. The presentation of the VMG project in the public arena;
  4. Strategies for the development of the project.
Participants in the discussion were: Irina Flige, director of RIC “Memorial”; Aleksandr Daniel, member of the Administration of “International Memorial”; Viacheslav Bakhman, executive director of the Moscow branch of the “Open Society” Institute; Boris Firsov, honorary rector of the St Petersburg European University; Evgenii Ukhnalev, member of the Russian President’s Heraldic Council.

The meeting was chaired by Aleksandr Khodot, the project’s chief artist.

 

2.01.2006

On the 2nd January 2006 a detailed article on the St Petersburg RIC Memorial’s project “Virtual Museum of the Gulag”, entitled “Reviving Silent Specimens” was published in the Frankfurter Rundschau. The article describes in detail the project’s goals and the work already completed, and gives a link to the website. It also analyses the political situation in Russia, especially as regards attitudes to the past and the absence of a long-overdue independent public discussion appraising the Soviet past and its legacy: on the one hand the problem of the social legacy, historical memory and its language, the political system, the new law on Voluntary organisations made by the State Duma; and on the other: work on preserving the Gulag legacy in such a way that memory of the violence committed by the state remains as a warning for the future.

 

7-8.11.2005

On the 7th and 8th of November 2005 the annual international conference “Memento Gulag – in Memory of the Victims of Totalitarian Regimes”, organised by the German Konrad Adenauer Fund and the Italian organisation “Comitatus pro Libertatibus”, took place in Berlin.

At the plenary session, dedicated to the historical legacy of post-totalitarian societies, and forms of social memory,Anna Shor-Chudnovskaia presented the “Virtual Museum of the Gulag” with the aid of visual materials and a detailed lecture.

Anna Shor-Chudnovskaia emphasised the main aims of the project:

  1. To beat the passage of time and preserve as many witness testimonies on the era of Soviet crimes as possible,
  2. To unite those museum initiatives related to the theme of the Gulag in an independent, professional community.
  3. To enable the beginning of a professional and public discussion about the legacy of the Gulag and its political significance for contemporary Russian society and its future.
  4. To prioritise the process of giving the present younger generation the possibility of finding out about a trustworthy version of Soviet history: its scope, its forms, and individual experiences of state violence in the USSR.