BBDO Moscow

Client: GULAG History Museum
Product: GULAG History Museum
Title: Survivors
Media: Book
Country: Russia
Date Of Campaign: March 2019

Background: The GULAG History Museum represents an approach of memorial museums, dealing with the history of the corrective forced labor camp system named GULAG that served as an instrument of state repressive policy in the Soviet Union between the 1930s and the 1950s. Nearly 20mln people were imprisoned in GULAG camps during mass repressions in USSR, 2mln died there. Nowadays the topic is almost not covered in mass media and the awareness of this black spot in history is terrifically low.

Idea: We want to resume it, and spread the knowledge among youth: always remember, never repeat.?omics is as the most understandable and attractive format for youth.Introducing SURVIVORS - graphic novels based on the stories of GULAG's victims. The project is striving to create knowledge about tragedy in the country's history among youth, so that everyone can understand how important it is for the retention of historical memory.For produce the book with no budjet we collected money with crowdfunding. Thanks to that we published “Survivors” for free. To interact youth we listed media for them - lifestyle and local media, famous bloggers - and also collaborated with Department of Education and universities. Pupils and students downloaded the e-book o via a QR-code or read it using e-book apps continuing to interact with the characters on the Museum’s website, where their stories are told in a verbatim.

Results: With the help of crowdfunding, we created a free e-book containing tragical stories from real survivors. The e-book has already over 300,000 downloads. The release of the SURVIVORS got more than 220 publications in mass media, discussions on TV and a massive buzz in social networks. Thanks to this massive coverage in both conventional media and social media on every phase we reached 106,282,000 people around the world. The e-book is still available for download and will be available for a long time not only in Russians, but also in English. The graphic novel format resonated with the younger audience so strongly that the Russian parliament has started discussing this format as a means to study history in schools.