Red History Museum in Dubrovnik: The Musealisation of Croatia’s Socialist Past

Although the last few decades have seen major changes in the field of museology, particularly in dialogue with critical heritage studies, some periods, practices, events and individuals continue to slip out of the main narrative. According to Tvrtko Jakovina, Croatia’s socialist past is barely represented (if indeed it is represented at all) in the country’s public museums. The author rightly questions why this period of history, one that carries significant weight in terms of political and social discourse, is so poorly represented in permanent museum exhibitions.^[1]

As Jakovina points out, there are manifold reasons for this intentional or accidental forgetting, the most significant being the general approach by Croatian society to the legacy of Yugoslavia, an approach defined by a narrative of opposition to and denial of the shared Yugoslav past, accompanied by an insistence on the struggle for Croatian uniqueness. This is a consequence of the period during which the Croatian state was formed, which was marked by a political and (more symbolically) armed struggle for independence. That context gave rise to the need to construct a new identity for the young Croatian state.

In this process of identity construction, new foundational myths were created. These replaced those of the former state, which had primarily centred on and been shaped by the Second World War, known in Yugoslavia as the People’s Liberation War (NOB). As a result, labour rights leaders and NOB fighters were replaced as national heroes by medieval national rulers, the Zrinski and Frankopan families, Josip Jelačić, Stjepan Radić and other symbols of resistance against Hungarian, Austrian or Serbian hegemony. Sites of memory, monuments and public spaces were renamed and recontextualised: some were forgotten or neglected (NOB monuments in particular), while new sites of memory associated with the Homeland War were elevated to national importance.^[2]Two notable examples include the Vukovar water tower, which became a symbol of that city’s suffering and its inhabitants’ heroic resistance against a stronger enemy, and the Knin Fortress, which came to symbolise the ultimate victory of the Croatian army.

In this new context, Croatian history museums focus on topics from recent Croatian history, and there are museums in Split, Dubrovnik and Karlovac specifically dedicated to the Homeland War. Their stated mission is to “preserve the memory of the Homeland War and educate the public, with an emphasis on younger generations” and “create a lasting connection between the past and the future, preserving the memory of the Homeland War for future generations”, thereby contributing to “the development of a society that values its history and learns from it”. Their work primarily focuses on collecting and presenting local wartime experiences through documents, artifacts, photographs and memoirs.^[3]

The Cultural History Museum in Dubrovnik operates under the auspices of Dubrovnik Museums, the umbrella organisation, but its permanent exhibition, aside from a collection of war photographs by Božidar Gjukić, does not feature 20^th century topics. Furthermore, over the last ten years (2015–2025) only two temporary exhibitions have addressed the post–Second World War period: Tournament of Nations: The 9^th Chess Olympiad in Dubrovnik, 1950, which marked the 70^th anniversary of that event, and Pearls of the Southern Seas – Tourism Culture and Architecture of the Dubrovnik Riviera in the 20^th Century.[4]

Dubrovnik Homeland War Museum (Muzej Domovinskog rata Dubrovnik) has operated as an independent museum since 2016 and is the successor to the Museum of Contemporary History of the Dubrovnik Museums, which itself succeeded the former Department of the Socialist Revolution of the Dubrovnik Museum. Its contemporary Croatian history collection has been enriched by materials from the Homeland War, which now make up the majority of the museum’s permanent exhibition, housed at Fort Imperial on Mount Srđ. Recognising the constraints of its own space, and in order to encourage the development of museology in Dubrovnik, museum staff provided both professional and personal support to the team behind the Red History Museum. The 1945 Yugoslav parliamentary election posters from the Homeland War Museum’s collection are part of the Red History Museum’s permanent exhibition, and further cooperation has been established in the development of other temporary exhibitions.^[5]

The Red History Museum

The Red History Museum (Muzej crvene povijesti) is Croatia’s largest specialised museum, and collects, conserves and presents tangible and intangible cultural and historical heritage from the 1940–1990 period. It is located in the Gruž district of Dubrovnik, formerly an industrial and still an important transport hub of the city, and housed in the former Carbon-Graphite Products Factory (Tvornica ugljenografitnih proizvoda, TUP), which was relocated from Zagreb in 1953 by government decree. TUP was the only factory in Yugoslavia that produced carbon-graphite, metal-graphite and metal products for a wide range of industrial sectors, including the electrical industry, mechanical engineering, transport and the chemical industry. It exported its products to many countries around the world and was the main representative of heavy industry in Dubrovnik, employing around 700 workers in the mid-1980s before production started to decline amid the national economic crisis. During the 1990s, TUP’s facilities were used for manufacturing and repairing weapons used in the defence of Dubrovnik. Owing to war damage, loss of markets and an ageing workforce, production gradually declined, and finally came to a halt at the end of 2021. The factory’s worker-shareholders agreed to sell their shares to the City of Dubrovnik, which became the majority owner of the property.

Opened in April 2019 and officially listed in the national Register of Museums, Collections and Galleries in June 2022, the Red History Museum is a private museum. Its primary mission is to conduct continuous professional research into the socialist history of Croatia as part of federal Yugoslavia, and to collect, present and preserve information, objects and memories from that time of intense socio-political change. The museum’s concept was developed by historian and curator Ivan Lujo, museum director and designer Kristina Mirošević, technical director Krešimir Glavinić, architect Tomi Šoletić, and Nino Glavinić.

At the time the initiative to open the museum was launched, all its creators were in their late twenties. The museum project seemed like a good professional and business opportunity: Dubrovnik is a tourist city visited by hundreds of thousands of people each year, and one that is primarily heavily invested in selling its history, most visibly through the beauty and elegance of the old city centre. However, Dubrovnik’s residents and visitors were not able to learn much about the city’s more recent history, something the Red History Museum set out to rectify in 2019.

The museum’s permanent exhibition includes around 1,000 items acquired through purchases and donations, while the museum holds over 1,500 objects in storage, including an audio collection, periodicals, posters, documents, furniture and everyday objects. The exhibition is divided into three thematic sections. The first, introductory section is titled “Socialism in Theory”, and attempts to explain the emergence and development of the Yugoslav communist movement, the war years that brought the communists to power, and the reforms implemented in the early post-war years. This section concludes with the events of the late 1940s: Yugoslavia’s break with Stalin and the beginning of its unique path to socialism. The second (largest) section, “Socialism in Practice”, presents selected themes from the political, social and economic life of socialist Croatia through a model apartment.^[6]In the kitchen, visitors encounter topics that include the development of healthcare and the role of women. The living room covers the right of Yugoslav citizens to travel freely to Western countries, as well as the obligation to participate in civil defence campaigns such as “Nothing Must Surprise Us”, which was aimed at improving the population’s readiness for natural or military disasters. The themes addressed in the master bedroom include marriage, military service, holidays and fashion, while the colourfully designed children’s room, filled with toys and memorabilia from events, including the 1987 Summer Universiade (Univerzijada) in Zagreb, focuses on topics such as the Pioneer youth organisation, education and youth work campaigns. After the children’s room, visitors enter the “dark room”, which presents lesser-known or hidden aspects of the regime: post-war retribution, secret service influence on everyday life and the Goli Otok prison camps, for example. Chronologically, the exhibition ends with the events of the early 1990s, specifically the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the proclamation of Croatian independence in 1991. The final section, “Socialism in Memory”, is the most personal part of the exhibition, presenting photographs and personal memories donated by people who lived through those decades. This segment brings the museum’s main theme, the lived experience of socialism in Croatia, down to the personal level and helps round out the story. The museum experience is enhanced with interactive elements: household items can be opened to reveal objects and texts, while music and virtual content is served up via tablets or VR headsets. In 2021, while the TUP Factory was still operational, 360° photos were taken of its production halls. These were then compiled into a virtual tour, now accessible to visitors of the museum. In this way, an important part of Dubrovnik’s industrial history has been preserved, at least in virtual reality.

The museum also has a small gallery space that has hosted numerous temporary exhibitions, some of them produced by the museum’s authorial team and focusing on specific aspects of local history. They include:

• How We Had Fun (in collaboration with Marijeta Radić Grabovac) showcased the nightlife and entertainment scene of Dubrovnik in the 1970s and 1980s, which was a peak period for local and tourist-oriented cultural life.^[7]
• Dubrovnik’s Black Diamond explored 70 years of the Dubrovnik TUP factory.^[8]
• Places of Remembrance dealt with visible and invisible memory related to the Second World War, highlighting memorials that marked (and still mark) that turbulent and tragic period.^[9]

Visitors have also been able to see guest exhibitions on a wide variety of themes: a rich collection of Cuban revolutionary posters from the late 1960s curated by collector Igor Jović;^[10] an artistic critique of contemporary tourism curated by Darko Fritz;^[11]select examples of photo transfer in Yugoslav graphic design[12]and logotype design;[13]and a retrospective of the first 15 years of the Slovenian art collective Laibach.[14]These exhibitions represent just a small part of the gallery’s programming, which has also included workshops for children and adults, film nights, and other educational and cultural events. The museum’s exhibition activities have also extended beyond its own space—for example, a major retrospective exhibition by Boris Ljubičić titled Square&Circle / Place&Time was organised in the Lazareti venue in collaboration with Dubrovnik Heritage.^[15]

Conclusion

The Red History Museum welcomes around 24,000 visitors annually, and positive feedback from public and professionals has made it one of the most prominent museum attractions in Croatia. A revamp of the permanent exhibition is planned for winter 2025 with the aim of putting new items from the museum’s collections on display and telling new stories from contemporary Croatian history. The case of the Red History Museum in Dubrovnik demonstrates that the musealisation of Croatia’s socialist past is not only possible, but can also meet with considerable public interest when approached through contemporary museological practices. By filling the gaps left by public institutions (whether because of political, ideological or practical constraints), this private initiative illustrates museums’ potential to engage with contested histories in a critical yet accessible manner. Importantly, the positive reception and support from the local community highlight the museum’s role in preserving a shared heritage that resonates beyond political divides. Through its active work and dynamic programming, the museum strives to be more than just a popular tourist attraction, aiming instead to foster ongoing dialogue, education and critical reflection on Croatia’s complex 20^th century. As such, it underscores the importance of inclusive historical narratives that contribute to a more nuanced understanding of Croatia’s past.