Memorialization of the "negative heritage" in modern Russia on the basis of the camp museums in Perm Krai

The article is devoted to the emergence and formation of museums at the sites of the former camps of the Gulag system, primarily about the Memorial Complex of the History of Political Repressions in Kuchino (Perm Krai) better known as Perm-36. The conditions of its emergence and conflicts around the museum are considered, up to the change of its leadership in 2013. Based on the experience with negative heritage in Europe and America and on the works of Lynn Mesell, John E. Tunbridge and Gregory J. Ashworth, the article shows the peculiarities of working with such a heritage in Russia by the example of Perm Krai, where sites of the former concentration camps were preserved. The sites of former Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Poland began to open as museums and memorials as early as the end of the 1940s, whereas in Russia work with the legacy of the Gulag began only after the collapse of the USSR. In the post-Soviet Russia the camps of the Gulag are practically not preserved, since most of them were ruined from time, and the surviving buildings are usually very far from any settlements, especially in the remote areas of northern Siberia. This gives the camp in the village of Kuchino a special value. The main emphasis is on the role played by former prisoners, guards and historians in the formation of the museum. The article raises the problem that different participants of those events remember the past differently, which leads to disputes and conflicts. Thus, in response to the establishment of the memorial complex Perm-36 in 1994 and the story about political repressions suggested there, in the late 1990s, efforts were made to establish a museum on the site of the former correctional camp VS-389/35 in the settlement of Tsentralny. On May 9, 1998, a museum of the Federal State Institution Correctional Facility No. 35 (FGU IK-35) was opened there. Its exhibition tells the story of the penitentiary institutions and the camp schedule from the point of view of camp staff and employees of the state executive system. In this perspective, prisoners are considered primarily as criminals, regardless of the article on which they were convicted. Despite the fact that Perm-36 in its structure is an analogue of memorial museums on the sites of the former concentration camps of Nazi Germany, the approaches and conditions for its establishment were completely different. In Europe, most of the former camps were restored and transformed into museums at the expense of the Ministries of Culture of Germany, Poland and other countries where the concentration camps were located, while in Russia these were private grassroots initiatives. In addition, the history of the museum Perm-36 differs from the European experience by the composition of the participants in its restoration. Despite the fact that its creators were historians Viktor Shmyrov and Tatyana Kursina, the idea of creating a museum on the territory of the former camp belonged to the head of Correctional Labor Facility No. 35, and for many years the former guard of Correctional Labor Facility No. 36 worked as his guard, which is a unique case, unthinkable when working with Nazi camps.

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