Tags: communism | museum | sight seeing

Now an established tourist destination, emigre film maker Jan Kaplan and entrepreneur Glen Spicker's Museum of Communism has become a mecca for westerners and Czechs alike seeking a glimpse into life under the totalitarian regimes of Soviet Communism.

Communism, never really fully realized, turned into a nightmare for the many millions caught in its grasp.

The Museum of Communism in the centre of Prague has successfully reconstructed what life was really like for the 15 million Czechoslovak citizens who lived under communism's shadow until the Velvet Revolution.

It would be a great tragedy if Communism disappeared from the earth without leaving behind an indelible memory of its horrors.

Communism was not essentially about espionage, or power politics, or irreligion. Rather it was a grand theoretical synthesis of totalitarianism... a theory which millions of people experienced as the practice of murder and slavery.

The roots of Communism lie squarely in the works of the philosopher Karl Marx. But that was just the starting point for this progress of horrors. The first exhibit to open explores three appropriately named sections: Dream, Reality and Nightmare.

Entry costs around 180Kc, but in the first few weeks of opening, it has been more tourists than Czechs who have visited, despite positive reviews in the local press.

Farm implements from a collectivised farm, machine guns of border guards and even a Russian lesson chalked on a blackboard are among the thousands of artifacts on display.

The museum lies just off Wenceslas Square, where hundreds of thousands staged the Velvet Revolution in the freezing winter of 1989.

It's quite ironic that a museum to the planned economy shares the floor with a casino, and is leased from the McDonald's downstairs. Marx must be turning in his grave!