EN
The paper describes efforts to present the period of socialism in museums from the beginning of this century in the form of exhibitions of selected Slovak museums, the collecting interest of individuals in objects from this period and the establishment of museum exhibitions, their motivation (nostalgia, technological and art-historical interest, way of spending free time, etc.), the efforts of civil associations bringing together those unjustly prosecuted before 1989 to document the lack of freedom and totality and to establish a museum of the crimes of communism as a form of building collective memory about this historical period. The study points to dealing with the past by providing an example in selected countries of the former Eastern bloc and a comparison with developments in Slovakia.