Many eastern Europeans feel nostalgia for the communist era

Those were the days, my friend

“OH MY God! We had all of these!” trills Alina Radu, a 43-year-old businesswoman visiting the Romanian Kitsch Museum. She is admiring crochet doilies, a 1980s TV set, decorative glass fish and the scarves and badges of Romania’s Pioneers, a communist-era youth organisation. “I loved looking like a general!” The museum, which opened in May, has proved a hit.

You can lie on a bed and fling fake bank notes over yourself for a picture—“though not naked, OK?” chortles a lady buying tickets for herself and her 60-something friends. You can examine night-light crucifixes, some of the most tasteless clothes of the past quarter-century and pictures of sceptre-wielding Roma (gypsy) “kings”. But for many the most interesting items are those which date from before the revolution of 1989.

The grim decades of Romanian communism draw substantial crowds. Across town up to 400 people a day visit the...Continue reading

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