Butyrka (Butyrskaya tyurma), a notorious czarist and Soviet-era prison near central Moscow that, according to some, could be turned into a museum in commemoration of the victims of Soviet-era repression.

The International Herald Tribune reports that former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has urged the creation of a national museum and memorial to honor victims of Soviet-era repression and to document their demise. A statement announcing the initiative, signed by Gorbachev and about 25 rights activists and cultural figures, said “the current and future generations need memory and knowledge of the repressions of the Stalin regime,” which it said left few families untouched.

The newspaper is quoting Alexander Lebedev, a billionaire businessman and backer of the proposal, who said that “Humanity has great monuments dedicated to tragedies — the Yad Vashem museum in Israel and the Holocaust museum (Jüdisches Museum) in Berlin, for example. We have nothing like that in this country.”

Gorbachev and his backers said one suitable site for the complex would be Butyrka, a notorious czarist and Soviet-era prison near central Moscow that still serves as a jail.

Read more (International Herald Tribune, June 4 2008)

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This entry was posted on dinsdag, juni 10th, 2008 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Ethics, Europe, Heritage, History, Museum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.