The analysis of museums is currently a flourishing branch of memory studies. This anthology, edited by Stephen M. Norris, Professor of Russian history and Director of the Havighurst Center for Russia and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University, offers fourteen virtual tours of museums of communism in central and eastern Europe. Written by experts from different countries and disciplines, it not only offers a variety of perspectives, but also records the current state of the musealization of communism. There are museums of communist terror in Budapest, Vilnius, Riga and L΄viv, museums of the Gulag in Kazakhstan and Russia, museums of national tragedies such as Holodomor or Warsaw Uprising, ambiguous museums in Gori and Tallinn, and (n)Ostalgie museums in Berlin, Prague, and Moscow. Not all museums are dedicated to communist terror: the Warsaw Uprising Museum has only a limited connection to communism, but reflects the current master narrative of Poland as a victim of two totalitarianisms.
In the introduction, Norris outlines three most important characteristics of the museums: Centralization of one's own nation as the greatest victims of communism; Equation of Nazi crimes and those of communism; Functionalization of the victim role as a cover memory against the uncomfortable questions about one's own collaboration with the Nazis. These comparative criteria are not relevant for all the objects of the study, but these summary considerations are nevertheless important as a suggestion for a possible structuring of articles. It is also noticeable that the editor and authors were inspired by Alexander Etkind's concept of “warped mourning” and hardware / software memory.
Another common thread is the structure of most of the case studies based on a virtual tour and using ethnographic methods to describe what a visitor sees. This is a very valuable source for further research studies because it keeps the status quo of the museums anno 2015/16. The contributions on the Budapest House of Terror, Butovski Shooting Range, and Tallinn Museum are conceptualized differently: here the discourses and different actors are the focus of the analysis. Here, it is not possible to appreciate each individual contribution in detail, so it seems easier to structure them according to the common findings.
Sacralization of the museum space by mixing it with commemoration of the dead:
The contributions on museums in eastern Europe and Kazakhstan show how symbols of commemoration of the dead—cross, grave, stylized gravestones, and portraits of the dead—evoke strong feelings. Thus, with the exception of the Gulag Museum in Russia, all the museums on communist terror discussed here affectively overwhelm visitors through fear-provoking presentation.
Narrative re-enactment and re-construction of the authentic, experiential museum:
With their re-enactment, museums in eastern Europe are close to “adventure tourism.” In Budapest, there are mostly foreign visitors attracted to this lurid presentation, while both Gulag museums in Kazakhstan are a personal propaganda project of the long-time authoritarian ruler Nursultan Nazarbaev.
Nationalization of the victims of communism, Sovietization of the perpetrators:
Museums are competing with each other for the interpretation of which of these nations is to be considered the No. 1 victim of communism. These museums are highly symbolically charged to represent the violence experienced as exclusive national suffering. The perpetrators, on the other hand, are exclusively central party organs in Moscow: the effect of their own population on Sovietization, and co-responsibility for the terror, is not presented.
Politicization of the Victims of Stalinism: The contributions on Kazakhstan and Russia show the problem of focusing on political and intellectual or religious groups of victims. What is not reflected, according to the criticism, is the experience of ordinary people, ordinary workers and peasants. It should be noted, however, that a fundamental problem of the culture of remembrance of mass crimes is that the majority of the stories and testimonies that have come down to us were not written by peasants, but by intellectuals: literary figures, writers, politicians, and people who were active in the cause of commemoration.
Holocaust and coming to terms with the past in Germany as a comparative foil: In almost all contributions, the musealization of the Holocaust in Germany and America is cited as a perspective for comparison. This is not surprising, since, as Paul Williams showed in his study “Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities” (2007), the Holocaust memorials gave the symbolism and language to the memorials of the other genocidal crimes. But the authors do not ask about the functionalization of the visual aesthetics of Holocaust remembrance for the crimes of communism, which includes the clear demarcation between victims and perpetrators belonging to different national categories and visual codes that stand for genocide.
Structures of the whitewashing of the nationalists in the Second World War: Using the analytical framework of “laundering memory,” Stephen Norris illuminates the processes of the rehabilitation of collaborators. Using the example of Lonsky Prison, it becomes clear that placing Stepan Bandera and its fellow nationalists with the other victims of NKVD and later dissidents makes the OUN perpetrators look exclusively like victims.
“Eigen-Sinn”—intrinsic meaning—of the objects, role of authenticity: Some museums analyzed here use explicit shocking images and do not reveal their provenance as Nazi propaganda; some convey an unintentional Marxist interpretation of an ethnically defined nation (such exhibits as vyshivanki); and the same authentic objects that told the story of Soviet violence can also stand for the story of the struggle for freedom. The contributions show the importance of the subversive character of the exhibits.
Taken together, the volume offers a comprehensive panorama of approaches to the communist past. What is missing, is a discussion of methodology. The museums discussed in the volume are of different types: museum as “temple” (exclusive national narrative to the martyrs); museum as “forum” (open narrative with space for discussion, education-oriented); and “histotainment” museums, which are commercial projects but cannot be neglected as memory practices from below. For that, the conceptual framing of the museum should be reflected first: why does this particular museum exist? The next question could be why this particular language— national, nostalgic, or religious—had been chosen for the presentation.
Some findings are already outdated: the description of Butovo poligon as a place influenced by the Russian Orthodox Church can be questioned by the developments of 2017. Here, through a social initiative, a new memorial, the “Garden of Memory,” was erected with the names of the victims of 1943: thirty-eight shootings per day, about 20 thousand in total. This is not to blame the authors Julie Fedor / Tomas Sniegon, who wrote their contribution in 2015–16, but it would be worth noting in the introduction.
All in on, the texts are engagingly and interestingly written, and offer—also because of the many interfaces and cross-references between them—an informative overview of the state of museum memory of the twentieth century in eastern Europe. This book will be a stimulating and helpful overview for all those concerned with memory studies and eastern Europe.
