I'm in Prague, Czech Republic, where I spent a sort-of delightful morning today touring the Museum Of Communism.
Which is located above McDonald's, across from Benetton and right beside a gambling casino. In case anyone wondered about how that whole historical inevitability thing worked out.
A highlight of the Museum is all the former propaganda posters from the Czech Communist Party, altered by local Czech artists and smartasses:
"It was a time of shiny, happy people. The shiniest of all worked in the uranium mines."
"You couldn't get laundry soap but you could get your brain washed."
"Paranoia, repression, needless invasions...no, it's not George W.'s America!" (over one of those "heroic" style posters showing Breshnev, Stalin, et. al.)
Posters all over Prague advertising the musuem use a couple of arresting images: a traditional Russian "nesting doll" exposing a set of vampire teeth, and a cute little Russian teddy bear toting an AK-47.
It's certainly not all smart-assery, though. The museum is divided into 3 sections. Or as its founder prefers, 3 "acts:" Communism as Dream, as Reality and as Nightmare.
One of the creepiest displays is a typical Czech school classroom circa 1970, with the lesson on the blackboard in Russian. (Czechs were required to learn Russian at the time. When Warsaw Pact troops crushed the "Prague Spring" uprising of 1968, reportedly many of them were baffled to hear the Czechs cussing them in quite fluent Russian.)
Another humorous display is a near-empty shop with a radio blasting Communist patriotic songs. Located near a public telephone which is, of course, "Out Of Order."
OTOH, there's nothing remotely humorous about the Interrogation Room display, with its always-burning "Third Degree" light and a telephone that rings at random. And you can bet that phone ALWAYS worked!
http://www.muzeumkomunismu.cz/
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