The Justice Ministry will determine the “foreign agent” status of Perm-36, the nonprofit that until recently managed Russia’s only Gulag museum built on a still-standing Gulag prison complex. Andrey Nikitin, Perm-36’s spokesman, said the audit is apparently a response to complaints submitted to the government by “certain concerned citizens.”
“We received an official notice that an audit is beginning to determine if we should be labeled a foreign agent. We still need to find out when exactly the audit will begin,” Nikitin said.
For almost 18 years after the collapse of Communism, the building was independently operated as a museum by a local nongovernmental organization. In 2014, however, officials decided to reclaim it for the state, seizing control of the grounds. On March 2, 2015, after months of failed negotiations with the state to keep the prison open as a public museum of Stalinist political repression, the nonprofit announced its own dissolution.
On March 4, members of the Memorial human rights community reported that the local government in Perm will transform the museum to showcase the technical means used to keep prisoners detained, focusing more on the guards than the inmates, with little or no mention of Stalin and Soviet political repression.
See also: 'A maximum security museum' Russia’s only Gulag memorial shuts its doors. A photo series