Some pages of national history don’t make you proud but they are worth knowing because it’s also part of the country, at least so I believe. Stalin’s time is argued about quite a lot; I’m not going to evaluate his reign, but the huge system of real labour camps and penitentiaries. That’s why I checked one of the most modern Moscow museums – the one about GULAG history.

GULAG is an acronym that means “state administration for camps”, so the whole museum is about prisons and the terrifying moments that prisoners would go through. The atmosphere inside made me feel a bit ill at ease but that is the best way to present history I guess: only facts, even if scary ones. 

One of the most challenging parts (even for me) was the hall with letters written by prisoners on clothes and wooden pieces. Or just imagine a room with cell doors from Russia’s most well-known prisons, each of them is a reminder of what was behind the facade parades of the state.

Not the funnest place I guess, but definitely worth visiting both for the history and the way it is presented.