Gulag Online — virtual museum
The Gulag Online virtual museum provides a closer look at the history and the basic form of Soviet repression, based on specific human destinies, selected objects, documents, texts and a virtual reconstruction of the Gulag camp. This is a project of the Gulag.cz organization.
Part of the virtual museum is a complete 3D tour of the Gulag camp, illustrated with eyewitness testimonies, literary samples and a tour of authentic objects or documents. All this is supplemented by a bibliography and basic texts on the history of the Gulag and Soviet repression. On the Gulag Online portal, the hitherto unknown fates of mainly Czech victims of the Gulag, newly processed on the basis of our own archival research and interviews with witnesses, are continuously being added. We also add texts describing other dimensions of repression - deportation of individual nations, executions, anti-Soviet uprisings. We are trying to point out the wider, European dimension of Soviet repression.
Individual documented locations and stories of witnesses are displayed on an interactive map that approximates the geographical extent of Soviet repression. This map allows you to switch between different layers - for example, satellite images or detailed military maps. It also shows all almost 500 camp administrations of the Gulag, under which dozens and hundreds of individual camps fell.
As part of the project, the results of the documentation activities of the Gulag.cz team are also presented - outputs from expeditions to Siberia and Kazakhstan, individual mapped camps, their 3D models, unique panoramic photographs and other mapped places associated with repression. The virtual museum thus makes it possible to visit places that are otherwise almost inaccessible, at least from a distance.