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WORLD NEWS Saturday 9 June 2018

Russia's Gulag museum: Prisoner data secretly destroyed

By NATALIYA VASILYEVA Soviet Union win World War
Associated Press II.
MOSCOW (AP) — A museum The Gulag History Museum
studying Soviet prison said Friday it has appealed
camps said Friday it has to the Russian presidential
discovered a secret Russian human rights council to
order in 2014 instructing look into the classified
officials to destroy data on order.
prisoners — a move it said The report has caused
"could have catastrophic an outrage in the Russian
consequences for studying historical community and
the history of the camps." beyond.
Up to 17 million people Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader
were sent to the Gulag, of the nationalist Liberal
the notorious Soviet Democrat Party, said on
prison camp system, in his social media account
the 1930s and 1940s, and Friday that historical
at least 5 million of them "archives should be opened
were convicted on false to public, not destroyed"
testimony. The prison In this Friday, Oct. 30, 2015 file photo, visitors look at an exposition at the opening of the Gulag and that Russians should
population in the sprawling history museum in Moscow, Russia. be able to know the truth
labor camps peaked at 2 Associated Press about their past.q
million people.
Case files of the Gulag agency they discovered
prisoners were often that the cards had been
destroyed but their destroyed in one region,
personal data was kept on the remote Magadan in the
registration cards, which Far East, home to some of
are still held by police and the Soviet Union's biggest,
intelligence officials. deadly prison camps.
Moscow's Gulag History Repressions perpetrated
Museum said Friday it has under Soviet dictator Josef
discovered a classified Stalin left a profound scar
2014 order that instructed on the Russian nation,
Russian officials to destroy destroying lives and
the registration cards of displacing millions. But
prisoners who had reached in recent years, under
the age of 80 — which now President Vladimir Putin,
would include almost all of Russian officials have made
them. efforts to play down Stalin's
The museum's achieve terror, hailing the Soviet
expert, Alexander leader for building a new
Makeyev, told the Interfax economy and helping the