Studying Museums of Communism: Recent Trends and Perspectives

The current volume explores, by way of a sum of case studies, the multiple ways in which the history of the Second World War and of communist regimes in Eastern Europe has been represented in local, national, and European museums in post-1989 Eastern Europe. Our approach is based on the premise that the remembrance of the recent past is necessarily multifaceted, reflecting the multiple and contradictory aspects of communist regimes in the region, their longevity, and their peculiar features. Due to the great differences in the outlook of communist regimes in various Eastern European countries and the numerous stages in their internal evolution, the communist past has been displayed in a bewildering number of ways, a situation that resulted in a fragmented and kaleidoscope-like memory landscape. To arrive at a thorough understanding of practices of social remembrance, it is therefore important to understand who is remembering, when (s)he is remembering, and for what purpose....