TOMSK, Feb 26 – RIA Tomsk. "The History of the Gulag. System and Victims" new exhibition opened at the Tomsk Regional Museum of Local Lore; interactive formats will show where the camps were located, what prisoners were doing in different parts of the country, what they wrote to relatives and much more, coordinator of regional projects of the Memory Fund Alexey Trubin told.
Earlier it was reported that the Russian Fund "Perpetuating the Memory of Victims of Political Repressions" (Memory Fund) bought out for the Tomsk memorial museum "NKVD Remand Prison" the adjacent room in a building at 44 Lenin Avenue. After the renovation, which will begin in the coming months, the area of the museum will double, it will renew the exposition and open a cafe.
According to Trubin, the exhibition "The History of the Gulag. System and Victims" opened in the Tomsk Regional Museum after several years of "travels" throughout the country and will remain here for a long time – as the main exhibition of the Tomsk memorial museum "NKVD Remand Prison" (a branch of the Museum of Local Lore) for the period of renovation and after its end.
"The exhibition shows how the system of mass repressions developed in the Soviet Union, from 1918 to the end of the 50s. The exhibition is very interactive: it is important that all this (the exposition) evokes a sense of belonging – and all this tactility, the need to move elements by hand, turn something... A person literally "touches history", – he said.
The interlocutor added that the exhibition is gradually being localized – the exhibits and stories will be replaced by "local" ones related to the history of Siberia and the Tomsk region. "The history of Tomsk is not so much the history of the camps, but the history of special settlements and exiles. It is also important to tell about this", – Trubin noted.
According to the correspondent of RIA Tomsk, the exhibition can be used to collect a map of the White Sea-Baltic Canal (Belomorkanal), to delve into a card index containing documents, letters from prisoners and other documentary facts about camp life, and read samizdat during the Great Terror. In addition, the exhibition presents an interactive map of the camps, equipped with an audio guide, which will tell you what the exiles were doing in different territories.