A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism

Fables from a Mouse, a Parrot, a Bear, a Cat, a Mole, a Pig, a Dog, and a Raven Drakulić’s task in this unusual collection of animal stories is to clarify the filmy confusion of “memory.” Her subject is not the central horrors of central Europe—the Holocaust and Stalinist terror—but rather the lives of the generations that grew up under communism, people of her own generation. Guided Tour is fundamentally the story of the end, of how that system was experienced across the plurality of nations (each animal is in a different post-communist country), of how Stalinism came apart. Timothy Snyder This slim volume is both charming and humorous. In addition it is simultaneously serious and thought-provoking. It takes a tour through a number of East European, former state-socialist countries – Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania and Albania – examining their political and social characteristics before the changes of 1989-90, and in many cases afterwards as well. The Budapest Times *** Zadatak S. Drakulić u ovoj neobičnoj zbirci priča o životinjama jest pojasniti filmsku zbunjenost „sjećanja“. Njezina tema nisu najveći užasi središnje Europe – holokaust i staljinistički teror – već život generacija koje su rasle pod komunizmom, ljudi njezine generacije. A Guided Tour u osnovi je priča o kraju, o tome kako su taj sustav doživjeli različiti narodi (svaka je životinja u drugoj postkomunističkoj zemlji), o tome kako se staljinizam raspao. Timothy Snyder Ova tanka knjiga istodobno je šarmantna i humoristična. Uz to je i ozbiljna i duboko provokativna. Vodi nas na putovanje kroz nekoliko istočnoeuropskih, bivših socijalističkih zemalja – Čehoslovačku, Jugoslaviju, Bugarsku, Poljsku, Istočnu Njemačku, Mađarsku, Rumunjsku i Albaniju – ispitujući njihove političke i socijalne karakteristike prije promjena 1989. – 90 i nakon tog razdoblja. The Budapest Times