Occupation and Communism in Eastern European Museums: Re-visualizing the Recent Past

This volume offers fresh perspectives on the representation of the recent past in museums of the Second World War and of communism in post-communist Eastern Europe. It does so against the background of recent European-wide debates on history, memory and politics. The contributors from across Europe focus comparatively on a wide variety of case studies, pointing out similarities and differences, and accounting for transnational patterns of remembrance at regional and European level. Occupation and Communism in Eastern European Museums argues that museums have a huge influence on the image of the communist past in Eastern Europe. It shows how they use a vast array of media tools, visual tactics and commercial strategies in order to substantiate ideological approaches to the past and to shape the attitude of public opinion.

Constantin Iordachi is Professor in the History Department at Central European University, Hungary. He is the editor of Comparative Fascist Studies (2009).

Péter Apor is Research Fellow at the Institute of History, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary. He is the author of Fabricating Authenticity in Soviet Hungary: The Afterlife of the First Hungarian Soviet Republic in the Age of State Socialism (2014).