The article analyzes museum representations of communism in Poland from the perspective of exhibition strategies influencing the public understanding of the past. Over the past forty years, Western museums have increasingly moved away from the affirmative model of presenting the past, dominating since the nineteenth century, towards critical paradigms and even those pro-moting social activism. The analysis of Polish exhibitions devoted to recent history carried out from this perspective allows us to reveal the functions fulfilled by museum institutions in the Polish social and political reality.