A new permanent exhibition titled “Locked Up Stories: The KGB in Estonia” will open in the KGB Prison Cells on May 9th.

During the half-century-long Soviet occupation, the house on Pagari Street was feared across Soviet Estonia. Originally constructed as an apartment building, it was turned into a pre-trial prison and served as the headquarters of the KGB in Estonia. This exhibition is about the cruelty of the NKVD and its successor, the KGB, and the suffering of people who were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered here. While the KGB Cells serves as a somber memorial, this exhibition honours the courage, strength, endurance, and hope of the victims who perished and survived.

The new exhibition introduces the role of the Pagari Street building as a pre-trial prison in the KGB’s network of terror that stretched across the Soviet Union, and reveals to visitors both the nature of the KGB as an organization and the means used to convict people, whether they were sections of the law or simple beatings and torture. The exhibition also tells the stories of political prisoners held in the Pagari cells, memories of days and months spent in stuffy cells, nightly interrogations and journeys between the Pagari Street pre-trial prison and the Patarei central prison, as well as how people endured in these inhumane conditions and maintained their will to live. You can also hear about how Morse code was learned for communication between cells and how people supported each other in these horrendous circumstances.

With the creation of a new permanent exhibition, the area used for the exhibition will be expanded and a new, larger space will be opened for temporary exhibitions.

The curators of the exhibition are Martin Vaino, Head of Exhibitions at Vabamu, and Andreas Kalkun, Senior Research Fellow at the Estonian Literary Museum. The exhibition design was created by b210 and Polaar Studio, and the exhibition will be built by Valge Kuup. Professor Aigi Rahi-Tamm of the University of Tartu contributed to the completion of the exhibition as a consultant.