Teaching communism at the museum: A comparative study of museums dedicated to communism in Eastern and Central Europe

Abstract

This paper aims at discussing four case studies of dealing with communism through museums and memorials in Central and Eastern Europe. It will focus mainly on the Memorial to the Victims of Communism and to the Anticommunist Resistance of Sighetul Marmatiei, Romania, the Terror House of Budapest, Hungary, the Prague Museum of Communism, in the Czech Republic, and the Memorial to the victims of communism erected in the square of the National Palace of Culture in Sofia. My aim is twofold: to show how a “collective memory” of communism is created through museums and memorials and how communism is taught in the museums through the items displayed, the story narrated by those items, and the key figures promoted by the creators of these museums and/or memorials.