History Museums and Social Cohesion: Building Identity, Bridging Communities, and

Addressing Difficult Issues

Author(s): Tracy Jean Rosenberg
Source: Peabody Journal of Education , 2011, Vol. 86, No. 2, Social Cohesion: An
International Perspective (2011), pp. 115-128
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

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PEABODY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, 86: 115-128, 2011
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC p Routledge
ISSN: 0161-956X print / 1532-7930 online 8 Taylor & Francis Group
DOI: 10.1080/0161956X. 2011.561171

History Museums and Social Cohesion: Building Identity,

Bridging Communities, and Addressing Difficult Issues

Tracy Jean Rosenberg

Peabody College at Vanderbilt University

Museums have the capacity to enhance social cohesion, which is the product of a trusting, connected
community. History museums and historic sites, in particular, can serve communities by stimulating
dialogue on difficult issues, accurately representing all the people of a nation, and creating forums
for discussion among groups with disparate opinions. History museums promote social cohesion by
solidifying the identities of their audiences—as members of communities, ethnic groups, nations, and
the world. This article combines extensive research with firsthand experience in history museums to
accurately portray the ways different museums affect social cohesion. It looks first at what social
cohesion is, and the ways in which both civil society and educational organizations contribute
to it. It makes the argument that museums share attributes of both civil society and educational
organizations. This article then addresses the different ways museums contribute to defining identity,
bridging community divides, and addressing society's most difficult issues. It does this with in-depth
analysis of several Holocaust museums and the movement in Russia to memorialize sites of Stalinist
terror.

Museums have the capacity to enhance social cohesion. History museums and historic sites, in
particular, can serve communities by stimulating dialogue on difficult issues, accurately repre
senting all the people of a nation, and creating forums for discussion among groups with disparate
opinions. Museums do not always fulfill these goals, and can in fact work to widen divisions and
deepen belief in stereotypes. Until recently, museums did not discuss the development of their
exhibitions with the communities they serve. Today, museums have begun to embrace a more
community-based role, moving from hegcmonic to dialogic institutions. Through community
input and discussion, history museums work to validate and solidify audience identities, whether
they be ethnic, regional, national, or global. Through the museum experience, visitors can learn
to see their nation as tolerant and multicultural, if that is what is portrayed in the museum.
According to Heuser (2005), social capital—the value inherent within connections between
people—creates "the potential for beneficent behavior through trust, whereas social cohesion
is the product of that behavior" (p. 16); therefore, organizations that work to connect people
and build trust among them contribute positively to social cohesion. This is a more challenging
concept in multicultural societies, and growing more difficult as the world becomes a global
society and ideals of social cohesion grow broader in scope. As technology and travel bring the

Correspondence should be sent to Tracy Jean Rosenberg, 2657 Blakemore Avenue. Nashville. TN 37212. E-mail:
tracy.jeans@gmail.com

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116 T. J. ROSENBERG

world closer together, social cohesion, Heyneman (2002-2003) explained, "must be built among
these increasingly diverse populations—a cohesion that constitutes a pervasive commitment to
voluntary compliance to broadly constituted social norms and to active tolerance for differences
among social groups" (p. 83). Museums contribute to that tolerance of difference by bridging the
gaps between communities, representing groups accurately, and sitting down with groups to find
out what they need from the museum.
There are four major types of organizations that contribute to social cohesion—political, social,
economic, and educational. Museums combine facets of both social and educational organizations.
As social organizations, museums function as part of civil society. According to Karp (1992),
civil society includes "the social apparatuses responsible for providing the arenas and contexts in
which people define, debate, and contest their identities and produce and reproduce their living
circumstances, their beliefs and values, and ultimately their social order" (pp. 4-5). Museums
are part of civil society to the extent that they are forums for diverse groups to discuss important
issues and negotiate their identities. Although they are not traditional educational organizations
(i.e., schools, colleges, universities), Newton (1994) pointed out the following:

The museum today functions more than ever as an educational establishment, owing to an increasing
social consciousness on the part of those who are often at the source of museum financing ... who
want to know that the money they disburse is serving some good social purpose. ... There is now
not only a strong emphasis on the educative function of the museum, but indeed a running debate on
how that function is to be fulfilled. The intellectual level to be attained by the museum's exhibition
function has been widely debated, (p. 272)

Museums are places where people can learn about their own history and become engaged in
current issues. As Naidoo (2006) stated, "An active, engaged citizenry is essential for a healthy,
democratic society" (p. 60). Museums contribute to social cohesion as educational organizations
by educating the majority about minority populations and creating understandings between and
about people and their experiences. Seeing another group's history accurately displayed in a
museum can take away the sense of that group as a "stranger," thus cohering the viewers and
the group whose history is displayed. In circumstances where groups are portrayed unfairly (or
omitted from the nation's story), social cohesion can be harmed and groups driven apart from
one another.
For instance, in the early 1990s there was significant controversy over an exhibition at the
National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in Washington, DC, involving the display of the Enola
Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The curators and historians
involved in the exhibition's design intended it to address many different views of the bombing;
it was an exhibition created to cause controversy and incite discussion. In January 1995, NASM
decided to significantly alter the exhibition, changing it from one that addressed controversial
issues to one that presented information without analysis. This was due to popular outrage from
veterans' organizations, political leaders, and social groups who felt that veterans were not being
represented fairly. Because the exhibition coincided with the 50th anniversary of the end of World
War II, veterans had expected a showcase that celebrated their heroism, not one that seemed to
portray them as villains. Fierce discussions and lobbying on the part of the veterans forced NASM
to change the exhibition to one that the concerned parties felt was a fairer representation of their
experience (Kohn, 1995;Thelen, 1995).

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 HISTORY MUSEUMS AND SOCIAL COHESION 117

The current movement among museums is for more community involvement and dialogue and
for active participation in museum and exhibition design. This participation creates trust among
the groups involved and between the groups and the museum when the outcomes represented in
the museum are perceived as fair. Community involvement in museums is, by itself, part of how
social capital and cohesion are grown, as these discussions can bring diverse groups together in
a neutral environment.

CHANGE IN MUSEUMS: NATION-BUILDING AND THE

MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY

NASM's decision on the Enola Gay exhibition and the intense discussion that preceded and
followed it were part of a larger discussion in the museum community about the purpose of
museums. Until the late 18th and early 19th centuries, most of the artifacts now held in museums
were in the hands of private collectors, invisible to the public. At that time, according to Newton
(1994), museums came to play a vital role; they "gradually became manifestations and sources of
national pride rather than personal prestige" (p. 270). As such, they became involved in forming
and solidifying (often newly formed) national and community identity. They also housed the
nation's collection of treasures, a source of pride for its citizens. This was, as Kaplan (1994a)
said, a way of building the story of national heritage, the common narrative of a people. The
National Museum of Mexico certainly did this after Mexico gained independence, combining
elements of various groups' stories into one narrative.

The museum contributed to an ideological process of sanctifying the history of the fatherland and,
above all, providing a new basis for national identity that included the Prehispanic past together with
the War of Independence, 1810-1821. ... Modern Mexico did, in fact, begin with the reinvention of
its historic tradition in a nationalistic, anti-imperialistic, and pro-mestizo context. (Morales-Moreno,
1994, p. 181)

This had not been the case before independence, when the National Museum displayed little
local, indigenous art, instead filling the halls mainly with replicas of classic Greek and Roman
pieces. As time passes, this narrative changes, adapting to new generations and events.
Still, these early museums were mainly collections of artifacts. Their main purpose was to
collect and preserve, not necessarily to educate. This, as mentioned earlier, has changed. As
collecting institutions, museums functioned in a somewhat "hegemonic" manner, conveying "to
their publics a sense of direction regarding cultural, scientific, and historical interests" (Gaither.
1992, p. 61). They decided what was important and what was unworthy of preservation, and
hence mundane. Museums are now moving away from this authoritarian style, engaging more
in dialogue with other elements of civil society in order to provide exhibitions that reflect
social consciousness and fairness. This is a result of the information age, which facilitates more
involvement and more participation on the part of the community. When the Internet and other
forms of mass communication make it possible for everyone to be a critic, museums must adapt
to remain relevant. The museum must find a balance between cultural hegemony (which can now
be challenged by ordinary citizens) and mass appeal. Museums "must recognize that their choice
of whom to hire and whom to listen to retains for them the cultural power to cast the terms of
discourse about people and history" (Lavine. 1992, pp. 145-146). They must acknowledge that

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118 T. J. ROSENBERG

this power can have negative effects, and that it is necessary, worthwhile, and helpful to have
community involvement in the creation and design of museums. MacDonald (1992) posited:

Only through a process of dialogue—an exchange of understandings between museum staff and
communities, and between members of different communities—can museums produce interpretation
that avoids the pitfalls of the "voice of authority" on which they have traditionally relied, and instead
becomes the voice of the pluralistic society, (p. 178)

Having this new pluralistic voice opens museums up to become repositories of social capital,
hotbeds in which social cohesion can be fostered. Discussion and collaboration strengthen the
relationship between the community and the museum, and the knowledge that the community
has about their society and the world.
Who is this "community" with whom the museum is developing a relationship? Involved
in these discussions and the process of exhibition development are all the stakeholders of the
museum: the employees (museum educators, curators, historians, etc.), the donors (political
institutions, foundations, other organizations of civil society, and individual philanthropists),
those being represented (or who feel they are being left out), the exhibition's audience, and the
community (large and small) in which the museum is located.
One of the main things museums must take into account when addressing their stakeholders
is that a person does not come into a museum with one identity; a visitor can simultaneously
be a woman, a Methodist, a student, and a citizen of the United States, among other facets
of identity. Different people can come into the museum with primary interests in architecture,
religion, history, children, education, or technology. One person may come into a museum a
descendant of slaves, another the descendent of slave owners. The museum treads a delicate path
here, needing to address as many visitors as possible without excluding others. As Karp (1992)
pointed out:

Every society can be seen as a constantly changing mosaic of multiple communities and organizations.
Individual identities and experiences never derive entirely from single segments of society—from
merely one of the communities out of which the complex and changing social order is made. ...
We experience these identities not as all-encompassing entities but through specific social events:
encounters and social settings where identities are made relevant by the people participating in them,
(pp. 3-4)

In moving away from being institutions that decide what is most important toward allowing
communities more involvement in those decisions, museums must learn to address as many of
these facets of identity as possible. Doing this will make more of the community feel involved
in the museum. When a person sees a connection to his or her own experience, that person feels
connected to the museum and to what is being represented there, whether it be a group formerly
considered "other" suddenly rendered less strange or an event far in the past to which parallels
can now be drawn. In this way, social cohesion can be fostered by the educative function of the
museum in ways that formal school curricula cannot, by finding ways to connect with a myriad
of different individuals.
Although museums are, in part designed to address different identities, they also become
part of the process of identity building, both individual and communal. As with the National
Museum of Mexico, in which Mexico's national narrative was solidified, this also happens with
museums small and large around the world. For instance, Kreamer (1992) pointed out that African

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 HISTORY MUSEUMS AND SOCIAL COHESION 119

American museums were mainly founded during the Black Consciousness Era, when the African
American community sought to define itself. "Most of them began with a mandate for 'positive
education' from the communities they served, and operated on the principal that museums can
be vehicles for social change" (Kreamer, 1992, p. 376). These museums were used to foster
community pride and involvement. The same spread of identity-defining museums occurred
in many postcolonial nations, such as Nigeria, where "the impetus to increase self-awareness,
national unity, and identity, so urgent in the early decades following independence, spurred
expansion of Nigeria's modern museum system. It remains integral to the role of the national
museums" (Kaplan, 1994b, p. 77). This process of group identity development is also the process
of individual identity development, or at least that part of identity that is defined by membership
in various communities (as discussed earlier). Macdonald (2003) discussed the difficulties of
designing national museums to define the identity of the individual citizen:

Thinking of oneself as a member of a national public—envisaged like a large "team," "family,"

or "community" but made up of thousands or millions of people most of whom one would never
meet—entailed a particular feat of the imagination. It involved projecting sentiments of belonging and
brotherhood way beyond those of direct experience, but only up to a specified "edge"—the boundary of
the national community. As individual identification with the nation-state and the numerous unknown
"brothers" could not rest on experienced social relations it had instead to be cultural—a matter of
shared knowledge and practice, of representation, ritual and symbolism. Moreover, the nation-state,
bom of popular revolution and proclaiming equality and freedom, required that individuals would
see themselves not just as passive objects of the means of social regulation but as willing and "free"
participant members, (p. 2)

This is, then, often the mandate of the national history museum—to bring together the various
threads of group history into one coherent tapestry. Pride in seeing one's own history reflected
back in the museum spreads to other parts of the exhibition (and the groups discussed there) and
gives them greater legitimacy.

SITES OF CONSCIENCE

Sites of conscience are a new type of museum defined within the last decade. Brett, Bickford,
Sevcenko, and Rios (2007) defined sites of conscience as "public memorials that make a specific
commitment to democratic engagement through programs that stimulate dialogue on pressing
social issues today and that provide opportunities for public involvement in those issues" (p. 1).
They are generally located on the sites of past human rights violations, although they can also
be at more positive sites of human rights, like the Women's Rights National Park in Seneca
Falls, New York, a historic site for the U.S. suffrage movement. The movement toward such a
museum type is led by the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. Sites of resistance to
tyranny—for example, the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising—can serve dual educational
purposes. They use the power of their locations along with innovative and informative exhibitions
to educate. They see their mandate as more than just teaching about the events they commemorate;
they are teaching for the future. These sites can have both positive and negative effects on social
cohesion and the reconstruction of nationhood after a crisis or a change in political regime. Brett
et al. (2007) went on to state that "memorialization can play a constructive role in shaping cultures

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120 T J. ROSENBERG

of democracy and therefore needs to be taken seriously in any democracy-building project" (p.
3) but can also

hold as much risk as promise for building democracies, depending on the processes that led to their
development and management. Memorials that trumpet ethnic superiority (in the former Yugoslavia
or Rwanda, for example) may deepen divisions and even provoke violence, (p. 2)

Thus, memorials often tread a fine line, a difficult middle ground. They must address the most
painful moments of a country's history while working to define the identity of the new (or
significantly altered) nation.
Memorial ization happens for many different reasons. Brett et al. (2007) discussed these various
contexts:

Communities see public memorialization as central to justice, reconciliation, truth-telling, reparation,

and coming to grips with the past.... Millions of people each year visit, struggle for, or protest against
these memory projects. Thus they have become a primary terrain on which diverse constituencies
address the enormous and challenging complexities of a traumatic past. (p. 1)

Even under less contentious circumstances, using historic events to define identity or incite
analysis and discussion can be difficult or counterproductive. Sites of conscience, though, deal
specifically with the most contentious events of a nation's past, such as the Holocaust, slavery,
the Gulag, and sites of mass violence and ethnic cleansing. These sites of memorialization and
education are vital to strengthening the nation and dealing with the past. When states ignore
opportunities to address their past, they pass over chances for reconstruction, moments they
perhaps could have used to address the needs of groups that have, during previous regimes, been
marginalized or wronged.

HOLOCAUST MUSEUMS

Although sites of conscience are generally located on the sites of past atrocities, it could be argued
that they do not need to be (although the physical location holds its own unique educational
opportunities). Holocaust museums, for instance, exist in many countries around the world,
fulfilling the same purpose of sites of conscience, which is to educate for the future. The Museum
of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust is located in New York City, far
from where the horrific events took place but close to a large population of survivors and their
descendants. Two concepts are central to the Museum of Jewish Heritage's mission: The victims
of the Holocaust were individuals who must not be forgotten, and knowledge of this event can
(and must) be used to secure a better future (Museum of Jewish Heritage, n.d.). At the entrance
to the permanent exhibit stand several large stones, one inscribed with the words "Remember,
never forget," the other with "There is hope for your future." This is a viewer's introduction to
the museum. Immediately afterward, museum visitors enter a room where a short film about the
concept of tikkun olam (the repair of the world) is playing, talking about society's obligation to
the most marginalized among us, tying in current events and the suffering of others before the
Holocaust is even mentioned. A visit to the museum ends with displays about Jewish activism
around different issues from 1945 until today. A docent, when present, may provide visitors with

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 HISTORY MUSEUMS AND SOCIAL COHESION 121

concrete actions they can take. Although this is not a historic site museum, it still fulfills the
mandate of a site of conscience.
At the same time, just because a museum is on the site of the event it commemorates does
not mean that it is fulfilling the mandate of a site of conscience. In Europe. Holocaust museums
are often located on the original site of violence. In West Germany, the Holocaust did not start
to be widely commemorated until the late 1970s and early 1980s. Time was needed before
people were willing to discuss these events, time in which the generation involved grew older.
Social norms for dealing with (or not dealing with) the Holocaust needed to change. One factor
was "the growing interest, especially on the part of the younger generation, in the country's
National Socialist past, which had previously been a taboo subject" (Sonnenberger, 1999. p. 53).
East Germany had a slightly different history of memorialization due to their different ideology.
There, "in the official memorials at such places as Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration
camps, the main emphasis was on the 'anti-fascist struggle' of the Communist prisoners. The
memorials that were built accordingly mirrored the ideological concepts of the East German state"
(Sonnenberger, 1999, p. 53). Today, there is a more cohesive approach to Holocaust education
in Germany. A basic theory in German Holocaust education is "dig where you're standing"
(Rathenow, 2000, p. 69). World War II and the Holocaust affected the whole country, so teachers
and other education professionals are encouraged to actively use their locations to relate larger
course topics to students' everyday lives, to show them how history played out on their own
streets. In part because of this way of teaching, there are site museums throughout Germany of
various sizes and educational value. What follows is a description of just a few of these places.
The Jewish Museum Berlin utilizes its location by focusing on German Jewish life before,
during, and after the Holocaust. The choice to focus on German Jews and to look at their history
as a whole, not just at what directly preceded the Holocaust, was made perhaps to directly relate
to the museum's main audience, which is primarily German. Yet the museum's inattention to
Eastern European Jews, who made up the overwhelming majority of those who died, seems to
miss part of the point of memorialization. Although one of the museum's main goals is to educate
about Jewish religion and culture—and the exhibitions touch on this in detail—it is the story of
this specific, relatively small group of Jews that is elaborated. Throughout the Jewish Museum
Berlin, there are interactive displays to engage the visitor's interest—computers that ask visitors
to answer questions about current events, photographs that visitors can turn over to learn about
the people pictured, and architectural elements that combine information and emotion. One of the
most remarkable is, perhaps, the "Gallery of the Missing," where visitors can hear descriptions
of artifacts they can't see, relics of those who did not survive and whose stories we do not know.
The Saatchi Gallery describes the reasoning behind this element of the museum:

Black glass sculptures are installed on the exhibition floors in correlation with particular architectural
"negative" spaces. The showcases, which visitors cannot look into, contain acoustic descriptions of
missing objects. With the help of various sound bites, missing objects will be presented to the visitor's
inner eye. (The Saatchi Gallery, n.d.)

The sound bites can be heard only by stepping on certain spots near these sculptures, and even
then voices intermingle and it is impossible to hear a full description of any particular artifact.
This element along with others in the museum contribute to social cohesion by fostering curiosity
about the "other," and educating in ways that make the "other" seem more familiar. Because this
is done only in relation to German Jews (who were often assimilated and lived similar lives to

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1 22 T. J. ROSENBERG

Germans, even practicing less-strict Reform Judaism) and ignores the more foreign, less familiar
territory of East European Jews, further opportunities to develop social cohesion may have been
lost.

The Jewish Museum Berlin is one of the largest Holocaust and Jewish community-related
museums in Germany, hut around the rest of the country are numerous smaller site museums.
In Cologne, for example, there is the El-De Haus: The City of Cologne's Documentation Center
on National Socialism. The Gestapo of Cologne were headquartered in this building from 1935
until the end of the war. Part of this building—the jail in the basement and the execution area in
back—are left in more or less the same condition they were in at the end of the war. The rooms
themselves are explained, but the larger context of the war and the Holocaust are left to the upper
floors, which now hold a museum about the rise of Nazism, the Holocaust, and World War II, and
particularly Cologne's role in each, working to make the history as local as possible.
The museum does not try to apologize or make excuses for Cologne's actions during the
war—it is, in fact, remarkably critical for a museum supported by that city. Even the sections of the
museum relating to the hardships of average German citizens during that time are overshadowed
by the ever-present reality of what the Jews and other minorities were going through. Many
German museums struggle with this (especially smaller ones that are catering less to tourists than
local citizens): how to balance representing the experience visitors can most relate to—that of
their own relatives—with the stories of those who were killed. The purpose of these museums
is not to instill guilt in the new generation but to educate and motivate for further action. When
visitors are often related to perpetrators and bystanders and less frequently to resisters and victims,
that line must be tread delicately.
At the El-De Haus, visitors generally go first to the basement, the area with less information
and memorialization, then to the museum. The reverse is true about the museum at Auschwitz
Birkenau, one of the largest and most well-known concentration and death camps of the Nazi
era. At Auschwitz, the original camp that held mostly political prisoners, there is now a museum.
Visitors arrive here first to get background information and hear what camp life was like; however,
the perception here might be somewhat distorted, as the buildings in Auschwitz are of significantly
higher quality than the buildings at neighboring Birkenau. Most Jews and others who died there
never saw this part of the camp—never walked under the gate that reads "Arbeit macht frei."
Many of Auschwitz's old barracks have become museum buildings, each containing something
different. Sometimes, this is the history of the barrack itself, or collections of artifacts found
by liberating armies—piles of shoes, hair, glasses, cooking pots, and so on. Another series of
buildings contains the history of the destruction of the populations of different countries. In much
of the communist era memorialization at Auschwitz and Birkenau, especially of the murdered
Jews, was opposed by political groups. It was not seen as useful. Although the museum opened
in 1947, the block dedicated to the Jews did not open until 1968 (Lachendro, n.d.). This was,
again, an opportunity missed for representation of the "other."
Birkenau, the death camp at Auschwitz, remains mostly in its postwar condition with very
little reconstruction. Most of the barracks were burned down as the Nazis left at war's end, leaving
brick chimneys and foundations as testament to what stood before. These ghosts of buildings
sprawl out into the distance. Grass has grown in since 1945. and birds have found homes in
the nearby trees. It is quiet, with almost no memorialization. Although the museum is always
trying to keep up what is left, for financial, political, and educational reasons, there have been no
attempts at rebuilding or turning Birkenau into a museum in the traditional sense. Perhaps one

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 HISTORY MUSEUMS AND SOCIAL COHESION 123

of the most unique parts of the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum is the way Birkenau, expansive
and overwhelming, falling apart with age, is left to speak its own story without the interjection
of curators or historians. A visitor is left to reach their own conclusions, to walk along the train
tracks or through the old barracks and wonder at what this place once was. Having no explanation,
especially after groups have visited the large and somewhat overwhelming museum at Auschwitz,
seems respectful; there can be no explanation. The quiet at Birkenau can serve as a place to collect
the self after the trauma of the museum visit, to process, to sit with other audience members and
discuss, to try to come to an understanding. In this way, this museum bridges the divide between
visitors through shared experience, and between visitors and the site's past through reflection.
There are many more Holocaust museums than those just mentioned, but these examples give
us an idea of what can be done and the ways museums can address difficult, contentious issues
of representation. What Heyneman (2002-2003) said of social studies curricula is equally true
of the history museum—these histories must not be portrayed in black and white; they must, in
fact, be challenging for the audience:

The content of the social studies curriculum can foster tolerance for different cultures to the extent that

historical events—especially those of social conflict—are presented as historical dilemmas. On the

other hand, if the content is oriented strictly toward constructing evil motivations of one group against
another, then the potential to cultivate tolerance is compromised. Similarly, only providing literature
or historical accounts that foster an egotistical view—only my people, my experiences—undermine
the development of tolerance, (p. 87)

Visiting a Holocaust museum or any site of conscience should never be a pleasant experience or
an easy one. They should ask visitors to reconstruct their ideas of the self and of the other, and
to wonder at the truth of their world today. As these are challenging exhibits for their audiences
to experience, an area for postvisit reflection and conversation can help these audiences to leave
less overwhelmed and with more of an understanding of the events displayed in the museum.

MEMORIALIZATION OF STALINIST TERROR IN RUSSIA

Attempts at memorialization of Stalinist terror are still in their beginning stages in Russia, having
not yet been addressed by the post-communist governments. The Russian government has been
reluctant to actively work to memorialize the events of oppression and the Gulag, as many of
the people involved in the new government were part of the old. They wanted to move past the
horrific legacy of communism (particularly the era of the late 1940s and early 1950s) and create a
new narrative. It was possible, they felt, to do this without addressing the events of the past. Now
it seems that confronting the past is necessary (Barry, 2009; Paperno, 2001). Fifteen nations have
emerged from the Former Soviet Union, throughout which the Gulag was spread. Each has its own
difficulties in addressing the Stalinist Era, but this discussion addresses only Russian attempts
at memorialization. Several museums exist already, but considering the size of the country and
the location of the current museums (the State Museum of the History of the Gulag is in a small
building off a shopping street in Moscow, and the Gulag Museum is 4 hr outside of Perm), there
need to be more to meet the nation's needs (Adler, 2005; Barry, 2009). There are many currently
unused opportunities to address this most difficult part of Russia's past.

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124 T.J.ROSENBERG

Due to the deterioration of the Gulag's temporary structures, there are fewer opportunities for
on-site memorialization in Russia than there were in the expanded area of Nazi Germany. As
Shmyrov (2001), the director of the Gulag Museum, states:

Not so long ago. in some parts of Russia, there were more labor camps than villages. But today hardly
any evidence of this vast system of repression can be found. Major camps were established only as
temporary structures to carry out a certain type of work: lumbering, building roads, factories or dams.
As soon as the work was completed, the prisoners were moved to another location, and the wooden
camp structures were left to deteriorate. Moreover, the builders of these camps were prisoners forced
to work quickly, and they did not care about quality. They had no intention of building something
properly, and naturally the camps suffered under the harsh weather conditions, (p. 25)

Although the lack of physical evidence on the sites of the Gulag may be part of the reason
memorialization is lacking, it is also an excuse. The sites themselves, with or without the original
buildings, still hold a definitive power and educational value. Many Holocaust memorials lie on
land where the traces of the Holocaust were erased before the war ended (e.g., Treblinka). The
same could be done in Russia. In addition to some of the old sites not holding visible relics of what
happened there, others are actively kept from being memorialized by the government. Locations
of mass graves have not been revealed, and those that are known have not been excavated, the
bodies remaining unburied. This is despite the fact that the bodies in these graves have significant
power to incite discussion and. following that, lead to the possibility of reconciliation. As Paperno
(2001) discussed:

The bodies represented a tangible presence of the past crime and horror in the present, and a tangible
sign of the final break with the regime responsible for the mass murder of its own subjects. The issue
of the bodies proved to have a remarkable power to evoke intense emotions; as a theme, it came to
articulate problems of the reorganization of society, (p. 90)

The government refuses to acknowledge some locations of mass graves discovered by the orga
nization Memorial, which is active in Russian efforts at memorialization. When members ofthat
organization attempted to go to the site to gather research, they were not stopped (as they would
have been during the communist era), but they were not aided, and further, after they revealed
the location to the public, the government refused to aid in the excavation by providing funds or
building better roads to the site (Paperno, 2001).
Part of this reluctance on the part of the government was due to the dynamic of victims
and perpetrators within both the public and the government. It is more difficult to commemorate
events that do not have an enemy to blame. Even Germany can separate "Nazis" from "Germans,"
although this is hardly black and white, but it becomes exponentially more difficult in Russia.
Perpetrators and collaborators are still present and visible in society, and the line between victim
and perpetrator is less clear, as deprivation was widespread and all citizens had some communist
party engagement.1 The victims still in society, who did not flee when the old regime fell, have
grown older and are now used to keeping their silence. As Stalin's time was long ago, their verbal
accounts may not be reliable enough to take as fact.

'Although Ihey differ in prevalence and importance, the gray zone between victim and perpetrator is also part of the
Holocaust narrative, as elaborated by Primo Levi. Still, concepts such as the Judenrat and Sonderkommandos are rarely
discussed in museums. Whether museums are the place for such discussions is up for debate, although I would argue that
this is the type of programming essential for deeper understanding of horrific events.

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 HISTORY MUSEUMS AND SOCIAL COHESION 125

In Germany, the circumstances were different. Survivors were not, for the most part, still
evident in society. They fled to Israel and the United States, among other destinations. The
Nuremberg trials provided some catharsis for all involved, even if it dealt only with a token
number of perpetrators, as did the Eichmann trial in 1961 and 1962. Still, it took time for the
topic to be broached in public discourse, as those involved in the Holocaust and World War II
grew older and less involved in public policy, and a new generation grew up both ashamed and
interested in the actions of their parents.
With both victims and perpetrators still part of Russian society, attempts at memorialization
must address both groups as part of any audience and acknowledge that "the same historical event
has a different meaning for the victims than it does for the perpetrators. The meaning ascribed
to such events is also influenced by their intended use in promoting partisan interests" (Adler,
2005, p. 1093). Museums charting such territory must be aware at all times of their own motives,
addressing whether they are the right ones and whether they are being fulfilled. Museums and
memorials can be used by those in power to excuse past actions, or as repositories of knowledge
that, once acknowledged, can be forgotten in popular memory. Neither of these motives contribute
to social cohesion—in fact, by excusing the perpetrators or forgetting the event's history, victims
can be made to feel further disenfranchised.
Discussed next are two museums within Russia now actively working to commemorate the
history of the Gulag—the State Museum of the History of the Gulag and the Gulag Museum.
Neither was established by the state, and neither is funded by it now. Museums were not a main
priority in the transition years, and although there was originally potential for state involvement
in memorialization efforts, this has since faded into the periphery. Adler (2005) went into more
detail on this:

Looking back to the end of the Soviet era in 1991, it seemed that the nation's history of repression
would be more fully revealed, acknowledged and redressed. Considering the censorious anti-Stalin
discussions of 1988-90, the precarious yet persistent efforts towards a full accounting of the repression
appeared headed toward realization. However, this expression of condemnation marked a high point
rather than a progression. After 1990 this movement toward historical accuracy virtually halted. In
the view of the victims and human rights organizations, a national amnesia regarding the Stalinist
repression had (re-)emerged. This is evidenced by the drift in the public's attitude regarding the
claims of victims of the Stalin and Soviet era. It has shifted from acceptable to fashionable to taboo
to irrelevant. This shift is paralleled by both the official and popular discussions of Stalinism, which
have oscillated between acknowledgement of its crimes and valorization of its achievements, (pp.
1093-1094)

The museums and movements that still try to address this history are struggling. The most
centrally located museum, the State Museum of the History of the Gulag, is "a cluster of five
rooms whose entrance is in a courtyard off Petrovka, one of Moscow's most upscale shopping
streets" (Barry. 2009, p. A4). The museum's own director describes the displays as "provincial"
(Ibid). Significantly more funding and public involvement will be necessary to turn this museum
into a prominent and modern educational institution.
The Gulag Museum is the inverse of the State Museum of the History of the Gulag. Its location
is the opposite of central. It is located at the site of a former Gulag camp, and "the four-hour
journey over bumpy roads to reach it from the city of Perm discourages many Russians as well
as tourists from visiting" (Adler, 2005, p. 1097). The director of this museum is a leader in

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1 26 T. J. ROSENBERG

the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, which contributes to the Gulag Museum's
innovative programming, its use of the museum's location, and the educative possibilities of the
event. It combines some aspects of the museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the formal museum
atmosphere must mix with buildings and surroundings that often speak for themselves. Ruth
Abram (2004), another leader in the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, summarized
the Gulag Museum and her reactions to it.

Perm-36 was once home to some of Russia's leading political prisoners. It was also part of Joseph
Stalin's scheme to industrialize Russia.... The bleak place speaks, as nothing else can, to the insanity
and cruelty of it all—the tiny, unheated cells, shared by four people in scanty clothing in sub-zero
temperatures, the worm-infested gruel, the backbreaking work and the loss of contact with loved
ones—for up to 25 years—simply for writing a poem, making a speech or just being young and
strong and needed for the revolution. The museum exhibits the lengths to which prisoners went in
order to survive and keep their humanity intact. Their art, poems and stories have been lovingly
preserved. Even the guards are remembered in ways that demonstrate just how trapped they felt. I left
it, as do so many Russians, knowing that this nightmare had really taken place and wondering what
could be done to prevent it from recurring in Russia and elsewhere. What was my responsibility in
all of this? (p. B02)

This is part of the purpose of sites of conscience, what is becoming increasingly the purpose
of history museums in general. Visitors should come away with a sense of responsibility to
others—fellow citizens of their country and the world. This responsibility is vital to social
cohesion and the mutual trust and respect that creates it.
These are the two most well-known museums in Russia related to the Gulag. One is in need
of major revisions and updates in programming. More museums are needed to make this history
readily accessible to the Russian population. It is possible that a new push toward memorialization
is occurring, one in which the government will play a much needed role. In late October 2009,

Russia's president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, warned ... that Russians had lost their sense of horror over
Stalin's purges, and called for the construction of museums and memorial centers devoted to the
atrocities, as well as further efforts to unearth and identify the dead. ... He warned that revisionist
historians risked glossing over the darker passages of the Soviet past, citing a poll that showed that
90 percent of young people could not name victims of the purges. (Barry, 2009, p. A4)

If and when this happens, the Russian government would do well to look to the Gulag Museum and
others (even those about other events) that are actively working toward creating social cohesion.
In a nation that is still transitioning into a democracy, these institutions can help foster an inclusive
sense of nationhood and provide an arena for the discussion of past wrongs.

CONCLUSION

Museums, through engaging with their audiences and the surrounding communities, helping to
define a cohesive identity, and discussing painful moments of a country's past, can contribute
to social cohesion. These processes will foster national pride and trust in educational and civil
society organizations. Museums sometimes pass over opportunities for growing social cohesion,
and at other times there are not enough museums to have any kind of significant impact. This
article has looked at history museums, specifically those relating to the Holocaust and Stalinist

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 HISTORY MUSEUMS AND SOCIAL COHESION 1 27

Terror. Further research would look at science, art, natural history, and living history museums,
among others, all of which have the possibility for a significant impact on social cohesion.

AUTHOR BIO

Tracy Jean Rosenberg is completing her M.Ed, in International Education Policy and Management
at Vanderbilt University. She received her B.A., with a concentration in Holocaust and Genocide
Studies, from Sarah Lawrence College in 2008. Her research interests center around museum
education, specifically the teaching of difficult issues through museums.

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