When the crimes of the past remain unexamined, their patterns can reappear in new forms — from filtration camps to full-scale invasion.
Through archives, personal testimonies, artifacts, historical research and audiovisual materials, the Museum traces the enduring legacy of totalitarian violence — from the GULAG to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
STATE
MUSEUM
TERROR
THE MUSEUM IS BEING CREATED
This website — and the museum itself — are currently in development
01 — THIS IS NOT YET OUR MUSEUM
The video above does not show the State Terror Museum in Toronto. It was filmed at the National Museum-Memorial “Prison on Lontskoho” in Lviv, Ukraine.
The museum occupies a former twentieth-century political prison used under Polish, Soviet, and Nazi German authorities.
Its surviving cells, corridors, and isolation rooms preserve the physical memory of political persecution and repression.
We hope to create a museum in Toronto where history can be experienced not only through documents and photographs, but also through space — reconstructed interiors, prison cells, objects, voices, and personal stories.
02 — WHY TORONTO
Canada is home to many families whose histories were shaped by state terror. Their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were arrested, executed, deported, dispossessed, imprisoned, or sent to the GULAG.
Some disappeared without a trace. Some died in camps or during deportation. Others survived, left their homelands, and eventually rebuilt their lives in Canada.
THEIR STORIES ARE PART OF CANADIAN HISTORY.
We want to preserve the memory of these people — not only as part of the history of the countries they came from, but as part of the history of Canada and of the families who built new lives here.
03 — WHAT WE ARE BUILDING
The interiors and exhibition concepts shown here are visualizations of what we hope to create in Toronto: a physical museum where individual lives are not reduced to statistics, and where visitors can encounter the human reality behind political repression.
But the museum begins long before its doors open.
We are already building its archive — collecting family histories, oral testimonies, photographs, letters, documents, personal belongings, and other materials connected to people who experienced state terror.
PHYSICAL MUSEUM —
CONCEPT VISUALIZATIONS
Exhibition Concept — Room 01
GULAG Barracks Reconstruction
Exhibition Concept — Room 02
INVESTIGATOR'S OFFICE, 1930s-1950s
Exhibition Concept — Room 03
PRISON CELL, 1930s-1970s
Exhibition Concept — Room 04
KITCHEN, USSR 1960s
Exhibition Concept — Room 05
SOVIET INTELLIGENTSIA HOME, 1960s
YOU CAN HELP BUILD THIS MUSEUM
The Museum already has a physical space in Toronto. We are now seeking funding and partners to develop exhibitions, expand the collection, and establish a permanent public museum.
But helping us does not only mean giving money.
Some objects may become part of future exhibitions. Others may be preserved digitally in the Museum’s archive.
Every testimony, photograph, document, and personal story helps us restore an individual life to history.
This museum is being built from memory.
And much of that memory still lives in families.
If your family has a story, we want to hear it.
You can help by sharing a family story.
You can contribute photographs, letters, documents, diaries, or archival materials.
You can offer objects and personal belongings connected to a family history.
You can tell us about a relative who was arrested, executed, deported, imprisoned, sent to a camp, or disappeared.
You can record an oral history with us so that a family memory does not disappear with the generation that carries it.
