‘Unnerving Kitsch’: The Problem With The New KGB Museum In New York

The flyer says the place offers a “journey back to socialism.” You can get a picture taken in an old restraining chair, or at a commissar’s desk in his coat; you can dial-a-dictator on an old rotary phone and hear Stalin or Brezhnev give a speech. It’s all “blithely morally neutral,” writes Masha Gessen. “In the absence of any historical or political context, everything becomes an exhibit. And, with enough cheer and an address in Chelsea, anything can be kitsch.” — The New Yorker