The past as staged-real environment: communism revisited in The Crazy Guides Communism Tours, Krakow, Poland

Tourism in (Post)socialist Eastern Europe

“…Due to the turbulent history, the region is abundant in historical monuments; some of them have been included on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Traces of socialism also attract attention: monuments, museums and mausoleums, new cities and other examples of socialist realist architecture, for example, in Warsaw, Riga, Prague, Bucharest (Czepczynski, 2007;Knudsen, 2010;Light et al, 2009).…”

Schrony w Nowej Hucie jako kłopotliwe dziedzictwo: pomiędzy edukacją a rozrywką

“…Niewątpliwie istotnym czynnikiem przyczyniającym się do wzrostu popularności Nowej Huty jest bardzo konkretny produkt turystyczny, tzw. wycieczki komunistyczne (Knudsen, 2010;Whigham, 2014). Jak zauważa Banaszkiewicz (2018), początkowo wycieczki wzbudzały bardzo mieszane uczucia wśród mieszkańców.…”

The ‘dissonant’ heritage of Nowa Huta’s shelters: Between education and entertainment

“…Such a relationship has been observed at Nowa Huta in recent years where the local population (especially new residents) start to appreciate the uniqueness of the place regardless of the negative myths that prevailed previously (Poźniak, 2014). Undoubtedly, a very specific tourist product, the so-called communist tours, has become an important factor contributing to the rise in popularity of Nowa Huta among a growing number of mostly foreign visitors (Knudsen, 2010;Whigham, 2013). As Banaszkiewicz (2018) depicts at the beginning, the tours aroused very mixed feelings among district residents both by the commodification of the their district as well as the interpretation of its past: many felt disinherited by means of the specific narrative offered by guides (with a large amount of irony, based on anecdotes, and treating the past with a cool distance).…”