Collection of the Museum of the Workers’ Movement

The collection of the Museum of Workers' Movement has been established to manage the collection donated by the Museum of the Workers' Movement in 2014 on condition that it would be maintained intact. The collection was formed after 1990 by the Museum of the Workers’ Movement, which, after the transformation of the Klement Gottwald Museum, the V. I. Lenin Museum and the J. Fučík Museum, took over their collections and expanded them. The National Museum took over the collections between 2014 and 2017. Currently, the collection is in the process of being catalogued; research services are provided on request.

The collection consists of the set of collection items, archival material and libraries thematically relating to significant social movements and their international context and, documentation concerning the history and some activities of political parties (primarily the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the Social Democrats). It also deals with the development of Czechoslovak society, chiefly in the second half of the 20th century. The collection contains items relating to historical revolutionary events – the Hussite Wars, the 1848 revolutions, the creation and development of the workers' movement, the history of the Czechoslovak social-democratic party and the history of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, the anti-fascist resistance, the Slovak National Uprising, the years 1945 to 1948, popular democracy and the beginnings of socialism. An essential part of the collection consists of articles and documents about President Klement Gottwald, Julius Fučík and other important figures (President Antonín Zápotocký, Gusta Fučíková and others). Timewise, the collection can be placed in the period from 1848 to the 1980s, with the main focus of the collection being the 20th century. Earlier periods are focused primarily on the documentation and presentation of the beginnings of the workers’ movement.

The principle of the processing and cataloguing of this collection it to keep it intact, and to preserve as much as possible the context from the records of the original museums. The individual parts of the collection are catalogued according to the character of the material (museum fonds of collection items, archival fonds of documentation and library fonds) and are subject to three different types of legislation – museum, archival and library. This why, currently, the collection is being processed in the following way: museum fonds holding collection pieces (primarily three-dimensional objects and art, including photographs and audio and video material) is processed in the Department of the Modern Czech History of the Historical Building of the National Museum; archival fonds with documents and small prints and material of archival character from personal fonds of important historical figures are processed in the National Museum Archives in the Historical Building; the library fonds from the original library of the Museum of the Workers’ Movement is processed in the National Museum Library and partially as the Collections and Books fonds in the Department of the Modern Czech History.