My GULAG
2013 - present
Project objectives
Since 2013, the Museum has been implementing My GULAG project, which aims to create an archive of video interviews of people who have gone through repressions and GULAG.
Project description
Employees of the Museum's Visual Anthropology Studio record interviews with prisoners of camps, members of their families who were directly affected by the repressions, GULAG system employees, as well as those who learnt about GULAG through documents, objects, family memories and archival materials.
The obtained materials are used to assemble films, which are then shown at the Museum's exposition site and in the museum cinema, forming the basis for mobile exhibitions and being posted on the Internet. Each film is the story of the hero about their fate or that of the loved ones, which involved an arrest, investigation, sentence. However, each film is an individual tragedy, often told for the first time in life.
Project outcomes
GULAG History Museum has already recorded around 200 interviews, most of whose heroes are Muscovites. In order to create an extensive database of video memoirs in all regions of Russia and abroad, where the memory of GULAG has been preserved, the Museum needs help of those who are ready to record interviews on their own.
Therefore, in 2017, in a bid to expand the project geography, the Studio published and presented a methodological manual addressed primarily to those, whose relatives have gone through repressions, and are ready to share their memories, as well as to regional memorial museums and public organizations. The manual contains seven survey programmes developed by the Museum staff, tips for video interview self-shooting, and technical assignment for professional film crews.