Museum of Communism Prague

Museum of Communism, Prague - darkometer rating : 3 - A small private museum in Prague about the history and nature of communism in the CSSR and its downfall. Both enlightening and even amusing! > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations More background info: see under Czech Republic . What there is to see: Topically the museum covers the communist era, especially from the point of view of the CSSR , of course, and also the " Prague Spring " and its violent end in 1968 – after all, one of the most tragic events in the Eastern Bloc during the decades of the Cold War . There's a series of thematic rooms, each dedicated to different aspects such as "the workplace", "education", "(lack of) food supplies", "surveillance", etc., as well as the successive phases that communism went through in Czechoslovakia, from Stalinism via the "Prague Spring" of 1968 to the demise of communism in the " Velvet Revolution " of 1989. All this is illustrated through artefacts, some more relevant (e.g. spy cameras) than others (e.g. bicycles), and through images and propaganda posters from those times. Explanations are provided on multilingual text panels in Czech, English and German – and more recently on smaller additional panels in other European languages, demonstrating the increased popularity of the museum with tourists. The museum's approach is hardly "sentimental", not at all glamorizing, more generally "condemning" communism . Old communists who would much rather have liked to see the "good old days" presented in a more heroic light might be disappointed here. However, the museum doesn't exactly cater for Western "victorious" sentiments either, which can sometimes be observed especially amongst some Reaganite Americans.