Abstract

Presenting the communist era in a museum environment is a challenge for museum specialists in Bulgaria, a subject dealt with numerous times in scientific publications over the past 30 years. One of the reasons persistently cited as an obstacle to the creation of permanent exhibitions dedicated to the recent past, is public polarisation on the totalitarian period. On one hand, there are ‘rose-tinted’ memories of adolescence, mainly among elderly people, and on the other – the trauma caused by the political system. This paper aims to describe a Ruse Museum initiative implemented in honour of the International Museum Day in 2017. An installation titled “Eyewitness Stories and Disputed Historical Events – Museification of the Recent Past” was opened in May 2017 and received visitors both during the 15th Night of the Museum initiative, and as part of the National Scientific Conference “Ethnographic Museums of Bulgarian Cities” held in Ruse on 9 – 10 June 2017. The installation presents six objects related to the communist era that are considered recognisable to the general public: a pair of wooden pattens, blue (Chavdar) tie, Coca-Cola bottled inscribed in Cyrillic, VEF transistor radio, banana bunch and gas mask. Each item is annotated with two conflicting pieces of information and asks the visitor to indicate which one they prefer. This approach addresses the polarised public perception of topics from the recent past and aims to motivate visitors to discover the truth. In addition, everyone is given the opportunity to explain what they actually associate the objects with if the annotations provided do not match their expectations.