Moscow’s award-winning Gulag History Museum announced its surprise closure on Thursday, a move critics attribute to the Kremlin’s ongoing efforts to whitewash Russia’s Soviet past. The closure was officially put down to alleged violations of fire safety regulations but comes amid an intense campaign by Russian officials against independent civil society and those who question the state’s interpretation of history. Established in 2001, the central museum brings together a vast collection of official state documents with family photographs and objects from gulag victims. The Council of Europe awarded the site its museum prize in 2021, saying it worked to “expose
