On June 22, a new Museum of Memory dedicated to the victims of the “genocide of the Soviet people” began operating in Moscow. According to TASS, it is the first Russian “scientific, educational and public center” focused on Nazi crimes against civilians during World War II.
The museum is located in 1st Samotechny Lane, in the building that previously housed the Gulag History Museum, which operated until autumn 2024. The opening ceremony was timed to the 85th anniversary of the start of the war. The exhibition will open to the general public on June 23.
Russian Culture Minister Olga Lyubimova said the new museum would make it possible to convey difficult historical material to young people and visitors of different ages in a contemporary language.
Presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky described the museum as a place that tells parts of history that had not previously been publicly highlighted. Sergey Novikov, head of the presidential administration’s public projects department, said multimedia technology would give young people a “vaccination against neo-Nazism,” arguing that parallels with the present day are obvious.
In recent years, Russian authorities have increasingly used the term “genocide of the Soviet people” in reference to Nazi Germany’s wartime crimes. No such legal concept existed in the Soviet period, but it has been actively promoted since about 2020 by Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin. Russian courts have already classified the siege of Leningrad and mass killings of Soviet citizens as genocide, and in 2025 Russia adopted a law on commemorating the victims of that genocide. In 2026, criminal penalties were also introduced for denial and approval of it, with sentences of up to three and five years in prison respectively.
The exhibition covers 1,700 square meters and includes 18 thematic sections. TASS said the modules address the origins of Nazi ideology, punitive operations on the territory of the RSFSR, the horrors of the siege of Leningrad, crimes against children, the deportation of civilians to forced labor, the destruction of cultural property and materials from the Nuremberg trials. The museum also includes immersive installations, including a reconstruction of a prisoner transport railcar and the interior of a room in besieged Leningrad.
The Gulag History Museum, whose premises now house the new institution, suspended operations in November 2024. Officials cited fire safety violations. In early 2025, Moscow’s culture department dismissed the museum’s director, Roman Romanov. A Meduza source said this happened after he refused to remove a section on Soviet repression from the exhibition “History of Moscow.” The plan to create the Museum of Memory on the basis of the former Gulag History Museum became public in February 2026. In the spring, most staff resigned, and objects from the previous permanent exhibition were dismantled and placed in storage.