In early 2012, Perm-36 Memorial Museum of History of Political Repression was at the peak of its development and was to make grade by becoming a federal-level, internationally well-known memorial museum complex in the years to come.
In the meantime, the RF Presidential Executive Office aimed to eradicate the few democratic institutions which had taken hold in the country, to muzzle the newly emerging civil society, to suppress significant civil initiatives. Perm-36 Memorial Museum of History of Political Repression became one of the first victims of this campaign.
Shortly after the elected Governor of Perm Territory was replaced in 2012 with a new, Kremlin-appointed one, the new regional authorities registered an autonomous cultural establishment, the ‘Memorial Complex of Political Repression’, and handed over the former Perm-36 camp’s buildings and structures to it in 2014. On the tip from the new authorities of the Ministry of Culture for Perm Territory, the ‘public’ staff took over the entire property of Perm-36 Memorial Museum of History of Political Repression Autonomous Non-for-Profit Organization which forfeited the museum, the collection, archives, library, exhibits and exhibitions on the museum’s premises. The public agency hired former camp officers as new advisers.
Actual liquidation of the museum of history of political repression cased a barrage of Russian and foreign press publications, with system-level human rights activists directly addressing Vladimir Putin, the RF President. As a result, the authorities initiated several rounds of negotiations with the Board of Perm-36 ANO but these turned out to be nothing other than mere soldiering.