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In contrast to Western, or capitalist, enterprises which sometimes set up such museums as "public relations, marketing and/or personal relations vehicle, focused on the history and/or development of the product in which they specialize" (definition of Corporate Museums by Prof. Victor J. Danilov), company museums in those countries and times - and indeed there still are many of them - served a Party ideological, propaganda, and/or didactic purpose - as well as in a C.P. context, a serious and even a competitive "public relations" purpose of promoting the best interests of a particular factory and the extent to which its workers exemplified and carried out C.P. directives. Museum displays in older factories that came from the prerevolutionary period specialized in presentation of displays demonstrating the extent to which their worker participated in the revolutionary movement, which often revealing documentation-pictures, posters, handbills, and the like from their often well-kept factory archives. Many of them retain a significant volume of original documentation and/or copies of documents transferred to state archives.
Later, factories started preparing films and/or other audiovisual materials about their history, exemplifying their positive and contributory role in the "workers's" state. Some of their museums even include auditoriums for the presentation of films to school and other excursion groups.
Today, some company museums have tried to adapt to the Western tourist trade, to gain admission fees from tourist groups. They have tried to revamp their museums so as to attract tourist dollars - such as chocolate factories included on Western tourist itineraries.
That of course, is a new, post-1991 departure!
So, if you have informations, personal memories, references, contacts, impressions,... about this kind of museums - before or after 1991-, please, (E)mail it all to me.
I'll be grateful - my research will only be possible with your information.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Antonio Eduardo Mendonca
(Universidade do Algarve - Portugal)
(acknowledgements: Mrs. Patricia K. Grimsted)
Fax: + 351 1 793 2112 or + 351 89 823 560
Mail: A.P.A.I. - R. de Arroios, 96, 3º esq. - 1150 Lisboa
Antonio Eduardo Mendonca <info@ex-novo-crisfal.rcts.pt>
Faro, Portugal - Friday, January 16, 1998 at 05:07:47 (EST)
Impressions of Russia and the Former USSR.
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