Preview Memory in Ruins: The Impossible Museum of Communism

Memory in Ruins: The Impossible Museum of Communism Elidor Mëhilli Department of History Princeton University Abstract Based on field research in Berlin, Budapest, Moscow, Prague, and Tirana, this paper investigates the ways in which the Communist era has been remembered and commemorated (or not) twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Each example is complicated by the distinct experiences under Communist rule and the ensuing transition, but even a preliminary comparative look brings out issues of interest. First and foremost, the post-Communist political landscape has shaped what commemoration, if any, has taken place. This has been mostly the domain of private enterprises or small-scale projects as opposed to official commemoration initiatives. Tension has also persisted between efforts that focus on the commemoration of victims or the legacy of repression and models that feed the “Communist experience industry” by exploiting the collective curiosity over the material world left behind by centrally planned economies. What clearly emerges, however, is the fact that the Communist world is widely remembered as a “lost civilization” and that efforts of remembrance in the former Soviet bloc, despite the evident pressures of national memory or the constraints and interests of local narratives, look vastly familiar from Berlin to Warsaw, and from Tirana to Moscow.