Museum of Victims of Political Repression, Tashkent

Address: Amir Temur str., Tashkent, (near the Tashkent TV Tower)
Telephone: (998 71) 244-73-31, 212-42-46
Open hours: 9:00 AM to 05:00PM
Day off: Monday

This unique museum dedicated to the memory of the people killed or imprisoned as a result of repressions and persecutions was founded in the Uzbek capital not long ago. It was opened in August 31, 2002, in a small park area, which subsequently was developed into a memorial complex, and that day is now celebrated in the country as the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions. The Museum of Victims of Political Repression is a unique phenomenon in the CIS, as it collected the sad pages of Uzbekistan’s history from the mid-XIX century to the second half of the XX century.

In the 1860s, when the Russian Empire waged a colonial war in Central Asia, the conquerors were keeping down the risings of the people struggling for freedom of their land. In Soviet times, after the October Revolution, the government destroyed not only the country’s best minds that cherished hope for an independent state, but also those who were only suspected of dissidence. The Stalin's regime marked the bloodiest period in the history of Uzbekistan: tens of thousands of people were arrested and thousands were killed, while the rest died in the camps as enemies of the people. The 80-s saw more than 800 criminal cases under a general name “Cotton case” initiated in Uzbekistan; the people were convicted for undersupply of cotton.

All these historical events are displayed in the Museum of Victims of Repression, which contains photographs, documents and personal belongings of the repressed, etc. Among the exhibits there are maquettes of the concentration camps and prisons where the prisoners lived, and of course one of the worst symbol of the repressions - a “prison van” - the car of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, which came to arrest the accused of betraying the motherland.

The museum is located in the territory of “Shakhidlar Hotirasi” (translated from Uzbek as “In Memory of Victims of Repression”) opposite the Tashkent TV tower. The place for construction of the complex was chosen not by accident, the excavation work during the construction of the tower revealed mass graves there. It was the place to hold quick trial of the repressed in the first half of the XX century.