Anna Ziębińska-Witek: Muzealizacja komunizmu w Polsce i Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej [The Musealisation of Communism in Poland and Central and Eastern Europe], (Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS, 2018), 341 pp. ISBN: 978-83-227-9149-3, photographs. Anna Ziębińska-Witek’s critical approach to the musealisation

Abstract

What do we learn about communism while studying its museums? Do the musealisations of communism make it an experience similar to the museological study of other regimes or an experience which is exceptional? How do contemporary musealisations shed light and how do they obscure sight of the experiences of communism of the inhabitants of Central and Eastern Europe? Are these experiences identical or different, from the point of view of the museums of communism in the various places of Central and Eastern Europe where communism was installed and where it is today musealised? Anna Ziębińska-Witek answers such questions in her latest work, entitled The Musealisation of Communism in Poland and Central and Eastern Europe [Muzealizacja komunizmu w Polsce i Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej]. After reading this work I have to express my appreciation for its author, as well as undertaking some discussion on communism, which, even if belonging to the past, has not disappeared completely and which, studied by historians, still arouses extreme emotions in both its witnesses and heirs.