Negotiating post-1989 identities: Foreign visitor encounters in museums of Communism

Abstract

This thesis seeks to explore the intersection between Communist heritage and identity through the lens of the museum, and the role of foreign visitors within this. It asks how contemporary museums that focus on the Communist period reflect, create, and reinforce post- 1989 identities, and in what ways foreign visitors engage with and make sense of messages of identity in these museums. Two case studies were chosen: the Museum of Communism in Prague, Czechia, and the Museum of Life Under Communism in Warsaw, Poland. Existing research into how the former regimes have been interpreted in the museum has most prominently been dedicated to institutions in Germany, Romania, Hungary, and the Baltic States, but fewer studies have been carried out to date in Poland and Czechia. At the same time, little has been written about the role of foreign visitors to museums dealing with Communism, with most research foregrounding the way the existing material legacy has been interpreted and used by locals. To pursue these questions, this thesis first explores the exhibition techniques the case studies use to authenticate their respective approaches, before analyzing how these contribute to the construction and perception of Czech and Polish national identities. To this end, display analysis and the analysis of guided tours at each site were undertaken, which allowed for an examination of how different sources of knowledge about Communism have been exhibited and authenticated in the museum. The final part of the thesis presents an analysis of in-depth interviews carried out with five foreign visitors from Western countries to the museums. These conversations allowed me to ascertain how this subset of the museums’ audiences engage with such representations and where this has a bearing on their understandings of Czech and Polish identities. The findings presented in this thesis demonstrate how the Communist past continues to be central to contemporary identities in Czechia and Poland. More specifically, they underscore how the case study museums, by attempting to separate their respective states from their Communist pasts, craft origin stories rooted in the collapse of their regimes which are the foundations of these identities. Furthermore, it concludes that the interest of foreign visitors in Communist-era heritage offers those who manage such heritage the opportunity to reflect and construct contemporary identities, challenging previous arguments that such foreign interest has become an obstacle to nations and individuals’ attempts to work through their Communist pasts.