ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the differences and similarities between communist and anti-communist exhibitions in Romania, before and after 1989. In addition to examining the pre-1989 communist museums, the chapter discusses three major museums exhibiting communism after 1989. Three of the most important national museums exhibiting communism before 1989 are the subject of this chapter. They are: the History Museum of the Romanian Communist Party, a museum that underwent changes of name, exhibition and ideology from the 1950s to the 1980s; the Doftana Museum, which was a former prison of the interwar period for political inmates and was transformed into a museum in 1949; and the History Museum of the Romanian Socialist Republic. The National Museum of the Romanian Peasant or ‘the Peasant Museum’, as it is known, was the first museum to attempt to break with these old ways. The prison museum that existed in most communist countries has the advantage of being itself a museum exhibit.
