Museum of Communism — Attraction in Prague

Read this before visiting.

Rather disappointing, especially for this ticket price.

EDIT: there's a FREE military history institute not far away, with a lot more to see. I highly recommend that one over this.

This is not a museum of communism, but rather a museum of the history of Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.

There were no mentions of lives of Marx or Engels, or the principles of communism. For example, how was communism spread? How did it spread through Eastern Europe? Not mentioned.

Instead, this is a museum with a very brief history of Czechoslovakia.

Museum artifacts? Not much. More than half of the walls are just paragraphs of words.

The descriptions were written in a rather informal language. They were long and not well separated. It almost felt like they made you read to make up the time for not having artifacts to look at.

English words are much larger than Czech. The museum doesn't even have a Czech name. This museum is very likely targeted to tourists.

Those paragraphs are clearly written in an American perspective. They also made rather absurd descriptions you won't see in other museums: comparing Škoda with "sort of like General Motors", out of nowhere saying the first Disneyland opened in the USA while mentioning communist films. Comparing Czechoslovak Paramilitary group with SA.

Numbers and figures are only mentioned in the paragraphs, there are no graphical representations of figures such as bar charts of how many people fled Czechoslovakia during the first years of communist rule. It almost felt like a presentation done by a student after researching on Wikipedia. Honestly there aren't much extra from what you can get from Wikipedia. Everything lacks depth and focused heavily on the bad things about communism. I do not support communism nor socialism. I only wanted to know how it was like living under communism. The goods the bads, economic plans, key achievements etc. Unfortunately they were barely mentioned.

Overall, it's not worth the ticket price.

Suggestions: rewrite paragraph in a more concise, professional manner. more artifacts: e.g. photos - make them large more in depth mention of history - in a concise, impartial manner more figures: how many were prosecuted each year? Of what causes? you mentioned prefab houses? How did it look like? Make a model of a room to visualise it. instead of just a little storefront, gave more examples of products at that time, add a private car at that time into...

Bit of a joke really.

Costs a lot (380 crowns), and most of the history being told is just very basic stuff you'd learn in a high school history textbook. There's minimal discussion of the Communist movement in Bohemia prior to 1919, and almost nothing discussed of the activities of the Communists during the First Republic or the war years.

Similarly, almost nothing is mentioned of history between the end of the Prague Spring and 1989.

There's a fairly obvious American bias to the exhibits in terms of how events are presented in relation to American history.

The moral tone of the exhibits is also odd. The seizure of farmland is described as a "moral depravity" - stronger terms than used for even the torture and murder of political dissidents. Additionally, one of the examples used to highlight the cruelty of the executions is a Nazi SS officer - hardly a figure deserving sympathy. Similarly, much is made of the environmental impact of communist industrialisation on Czechia, whilst dishonestly failing to put it into the context of how industry operated worldwide. Much the same is done with medicine.

Some attempt at social history is made, with videos of people who lived through the regime making up parts of the exhibit, and some exhibits being made up to show classrooms or workshops, but sadly, the whole thing utterly fails to present a Czech perspective on the Communist period.

In short: save your crowns, and go to the truly excellent National Museum just down the road, or the equally excellent National Technical Museum just over the river. Both have much more real...

At interesting museum covering the history of "Czechoslovakia" from 1938 to 1989.

The entrance was unfortunately obscured by a large school party, but apart from that, there was no problem with my visit.

I found most of exhibits interesting and there was a large amount of text to read, I spent a good hour/hour and a half in the museum.

The museum clearly has an agenda... Every thing in Stalinist (Communist) Czechoslovakia was bad! While I'm a man of the left, and I certainly have no time for the old Czechoslovakian "Communist" government, who used police state tactics against legitimate political opposition and crushed the Prague spring of 1968.

There were some jarring information boards, the Czechoslovakian Communist Party for all its many faults in 1948 had a large amount of support in the Czech part of Czechoslovakia which was glossed over and not really explained. Why and How it got that support?

Some boards were just silly... "there were no mobile phones in Czechoslovakia before 1989" ... The majority of the world didn't have mobile phones before 1989! The Golden Sixties board denounces for Czechoslovakia for only abolishing Saturday working in 1968... But I'm sorry many of us in the democratic West were still working Saturday's in the 1980s!

There was alot wrong with the old regime, no opposition parties, no free trade unions, no civic freedom... But nearly 40 years after the end of the regime, use the museum to put the past into proper context.

Saying all that it's still...