What’s on at the Occupation Museum
Every visit to the Occupation Museum brings a new surprise of some description. For someone who did not live through Estonia’s Soviet occupation, it’s easy to imagine what the city of Tallinn might have looked like in Soviet times, but it’s not possible to live through those times. That’s where a place like the Occupation Museum comes in. In a modernist, glass-surrounded building at the bottom of Toompuiestee, the museum projects an understated calm, all the better for drawing attention to its exhibits.
The aim of the permanent exhibitions is to show what Estonia was like to live in, under Soviet rule. There are impressive artefacts, including paraphernalia from an old home, old cars, and of course the rogues’ gallery of Soviet political and military busts held downstairs, opposite the toilets, and sure to give you a fright when you realise how close you are to Lenin.
A riveting exhibition that takes place until January 3 2016, this explores the capital of the then Czechoslovakia through the hastily-snapped camera of a series of watchers employed by the Czech security police to keep an eye on people suspected of activities against the government.
As the photographers were not professional artists, and their concern was not getting caught, rather than taking a good photo, the details often catch the viewer by surprise.
There are lots of examples of Prague in the time of communist rule that will surprise the modern viewer, and which were caught incidentally by the lens.
To learn more about this and similar topics
