171. He became the first [Text] / V. A. Khanevich // Museum. - 2016. - pp. 34-39

A review article about the Tomsk Memorial Museum of the History of Political Repression, "The NKVD Pre-Trial Prison." The museum was established in 1989 at the initiative of members of the Tomsk Memorial Society as a division of the Tomsk Regional Museum of Local History. It became the first museum dedicated to the history of political repression not only in Russia but also in the entire post-Soviet space.

The museum is located in the basement of a building in central Tomsk (44 Lenin Avenue), which housed the Tomsk City Department of the OGPU-NKVD pretrial detention facility from 1923 to 1944. Currently, the museum and the adjacent Memory Square, home to a monument to the victims of the Bolshevik terror, form a single historical and architectural memorial complex.

The publication describes in detail:

• The museum's collections contain more than 10,000 items and include an electronic database of nearly 200,000 victims of repression in the Tomsk region.
• Exhibition : The permanent exhibition opened in 2002 and includes a reconstructed prison corridor, a cell for defendants, an investigator's office, and an underground corridor. Sections of the exhibition are devoted to chronicles of repression, the Great Terror, the Gulag, special settlers of the Narym Territory, and biographies of those repressed, including the poet N.A. Klyuev and the philosopher G.G. Shpet.
• Exhibition activities : Thematic exhibitions, presentations, and meetings are regularly held in the 24-square-meter exhibition hall. In 2015, for example, eight exhibitions were held, two of which were in collaboration with museums in Poland and Latvia. Special mention should be made of the exhibitions "Tomsk-Narym Golgotha: From the Lives of Those Who Suffered for Their Faith," "Vasily Grossman: Life and Fate," and "Papa's Letters."
• Projects and Publications : The museum participates in joint projects ("Virtual Gulag Museum," "Monuments and Memorials to Victims of Political Repression") and implements its own ("Tomsk Martyrology," "The Last Witness"). Museum staff have published 20 books in the series "People and Power. From the History of the Tomsk Land" and "Archives of Siberia. Classified."
• Audience : the focus of the work is on schoolchildren and students, for whom history lessons, seminars and lectures are held.

The museum serves as an interregional Siberian museum-historical resource and information center and actively works to perpetuate the memory of victims of political repression.

List of persons mentioned

• Agathangel, Archbishop and Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, who served his exile in Kolpashevo.
• Grimblit Tatyana was a Russian Orthodox Church ascetic from Tomsk who was killed in Butovo, Moscow, in 1937 and has now been canonized.
• Vasily Grossman is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, the author of a literary work that became the subject of the exhibition.
• Juvenaly, Bishop of Ryazan, was a bishop who was shot at Kashtak in 1937.
• Klyuev N.A. is a poet, among those repressed, whose biographical materials are presented in the exhibition.
• Alexey Kudrin is the chairman of the Civil Initiatives Committee, whose financial support enabled the museum to launch its own website in 2013.
• Lukin V.P. - Human Rights Commissioner of the Russian Federation, who left a review in the museum's guest book.
• A.I. Solzhenitsyn was the first honorary guest of the museum to visit Tomsk during his return to his homeland from exile.
• Vasily Khanevich is one of the founders and, at the time of publication, the director of the Memorial Museum "NKVD Investigative Prison".
• Marietta Chudakova, professor at the Literary Institute (Moscow), left a review in the museum's guest book.
• Shatilov M.B. is a Siberian public and political figure, director of the Tomsk Regional Museum, and one of the repressed persons whose biographical materials are presented in the exhibition.
• Shpet G.G. is a philosopher and linguist, among those repressed, whose biographical materials are presented in the exhibition.