Cruise Ships and Prison Camps: Reflections from the Russian Far East on Museums and the Crafting of History

Abstract

In formerly socialist societies the state has dominated sites like museums viewed as critical for producing a national past, but in the case of the Russian Federation these same institutions often are being utilized now to critically examine the past. For many in the emerging market economy of the Russian Federation, formerly state-dominated sites like museums have become important economic resources as well as new sites for representing shifting concepts of history. In this article I examine the museum as an artifact of socialist and postsocialist society and consider how distinct political economies shape the ways in which cultural practices, as well as national and local histories, are depicted.