How Soviets Reimagined Museums 

The Titanic Museum in Belfast tells an incredible story as you make your way through. You feel transported back in time as you learn about the textile industry and then shipbuilding industry in the region and what life was like, and by the time you get to the part of the "story" (the room in the museum) regarding the sinking, the environment is dark, there are little lights overhead like stars above the open sea, you hear recordings from the incident, and you leave feeling absolutely shaken, as if you have just experienced the event yourself. Truly amazing. Best museum I've ever seen due to the storytelling nature of it all. The Soviets would have approved.

Soviet museum guides be like: Look at this fucking literature, these nobles were MORONS. Look at this!"

had no idea about this alternative form of museums! i’ve had a weird dream / ambition to make a museum like that of modern history or the history of current events. i just always thought the regular museum format would suck for that. this is way better

This is like what the museum I work at is like

oh that's cool! I haven't been to many museums in my life but i don't remember any of the ones I've visited to look like this, I'd definitely go if there were :)

Very interesting! This early soviet museology resembles in many fronts to the museology developed by Riviere and the ecomuseums as center where the arts and cultures are read throught the lens of context and integration with other spheres of life and human socialization. It's curious how early soviet theories developed as preconfigurations of later theories and paradigms, some of these being very influential. But is so sad how we tend to ignore this other interpretations and developments of the early soviet thinking :(

Instant sub

That's the way.

Where you suggest buy soviet style clothes as a guy

The Soviets were far ahead, most modern museums are like this, or at least try to be. Grouping things together based on period and artist, showing context to individual pieces and trying to give the museum visitors a more complete picture than what the object itself could tell you. Funnily, the best example of these principles I have ever seen was an exhibition on Marx in the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin. It explained in detail the ideas and material circumstances of not just Marx and his peers, but the era as a whole, up to and including a working steam engine and loom. It didn't shy away from criticism or praise, and included a lengthy explanation of the antisemitism of the time, which ran rampant even in anti-capitalist and socialist circles. Though Marx initially wrote some rather... uncharitable things about jewish people and their role in capitalism, he later denounced these ideas, called for the emancipation of German jews and spent the rest of his life beefing with anti-semites. It also included a lot of interesting tidbits not even most socialist would know, such as how the use of guano (sea bird droppings) as a fertilizer influenced Marx's ideas on capitalist exploitation of the natural world. If you ever find yourself in Berlin, I heartily recommend the DHM (as well as the DDR museum if you wanna laugh at ridiculous anti-socialist propaganda)

Very interesting! I wonder how much Soviet museology changed museology world wide or it's influence in communist countries. Isn't this the dominant form of museums today? Wow.

I've only been to like two museums in my life and I loved learning the history but it wasn't really memorable or excited!Though I'm sure I'll never be bored at a Soviet museum

I haven't been able to find a copy of this book anywhere online. I'm currently studying an MA in Curating Collections & Heritage, I'm wondering if there's anyway we could get a version of that chapter uploaded online somewhere?

Sadly the nazis during operation barbarossa (the invasion of the soviet union) stole and burned alot of artifacts from museums they came across.

There are amazing Mongolian fossils found by soviet and other communist scientists, most of them were women. The fighting dinosaurs is one such amazing find.

Please, dear Lady Izdihar or anyone! What is the jumpy soviet tune in the background of your videos and your intro. PLEASE, I BEG YOU. I NEEED ITTTT

A fascinating sort of precursor to China's approach to museums through the Cultural Revolution, which seems to get far more attention.

Ahhhhhhhh this is so cool! I knew museums didn't have to be drab and pretentious

Some literature on Yugoslavia

This just sounds a bit confusing to me. Were museums before the revolution different? Cause this already sounds like what museums are under capitalism, or at least under Canadian flavored capitalism. And what of the back of house practices? Talking about what the people are learning is one thing, but the primary practice of a museum is preservation of historic and scientific specimens (speaking as a museum volunteer here, the front of house is MUCH smaller than the back of house sections, and MUCH more happens behind the public displays). The book doesn't sound bad or negative in any way mind you, but it doesn't really sound like a distinct difference from Western museums? Other than maybe accessibility and I would assume/hope colonial collections (the amount of stolen Indigenous and African artifacts western museums own is astounding, I would definitely hope USSR museums either had no history of stealing from the Yupik or returned any stolen artifacts, but again, such a relationship isn't described in this video). I mean this all in good faith, I just feel like there's a lot missing here that I, as someone who works in museums, would really want to know. Does the book go more into these other areas of interest?

0:55 “The anarchist prince Kropotkin?” What? 😂

But that's not really what the Soviets did to museums and art spaces. The USSR was great at making these grand sweeping statements and putting on an aesthetically pleasing spectacle to poorly mask the grinding oppression and poverty their fascism-dressed-as-socialism brought about. They might have had the political wherewithal to initially weaponize the fascinating paradigm shifts in art instigated by creative Russians (Rayonism and Supematism spring most immediately to mind) but once they had attained power (and liquidated all of the _actual_ leftists, anarchists and Marxists from their ranks) any officially sanctioned or even just tolerated artistic endeavour in the USSR regressed into propaganda. There was certainly a surprising amount of artistic innovation going on beneath the surface, but you had to dig pretty deeply to see past all of the ugly "socialist realism" of rosy cheeked peasants and grotesquely martial public sculpture to notice it. It took several decades for the likes of the Lianozovo Group, the Sots Art crowd, and the Moscow Conceptualists before the world started seeing any meaningful counterculture and institutional critique of museological and political systems. The only "reimagining" of a museums purpose the Soviets conducted was to reimagine the historical context of those museums collections and demand museum-goers accept it with the utmost enthusiasm and obedience.

Communist muslim huh?..