Remembering the Communist Regime: Czech Memorial Sites
The website is a result of documentary and research work and its authors make use of it to present more than 800 Czech memorial sites reflecting, in different ways, the period of Communist regime in former Czechoslovakia. It captures and illustratively demonstrates how social reflections of life under Communism are projected into the culture of remembrance and how this culture affects the shaping of memory of the Communist past. With only minor exceptions, the website presents monuments, memorials, memorial plaques, crosses, inscriptions, etc. that have been unveiled from November 1989 to November 2019.
Web Site Structure and Perusal
The web app offers three basic options for viewing memorial sites – by region, by theme or on a timeline, as well as detailed database searches. The full-text search engine allows you to work with individual filters – topic, period, region, year of unveiling.
Topics
We have divided the memorial sites into thematic units, although we are aware that any structuring entails necessary simplifications. The first group consists of partially institutionalized centers or environments in which expressions of dissent against the February coup and post-February developments were formed, and which the Communist regime, because of their democratic character, also perceived as possible hotbeds of resistance demanding its attention – the Army [Armáda a bezpečnostní složky], Churches [Církve a náboženské přesvědčení], the Sokol and Orel physical education clubs [Sokol a Orel], the youth and scout movement [Mládež a skautské hnutí], the opposition of non-communist parties and intellectuals [Politická opozice; Intelektuálové v opozici], which are further complemented by thematic units related to forms of civil resistance [Občanský odpor] and resistance to collectivization in the villages [Kolektivizace]. Separate categories deal with the phenomenon of the Iron Curtain [Železná opona], exile and emigration [Exil a emigrace], forced labour and imprisonment [PTP a pracovní tábory; Věznění] and the symbol of the repression of the 1950s – political trials [Politické procesy]. Two thematic units are defined by the events of 1968–1969 [Pražské jaro a invaze] and 1989 [Listopad 1989], which is preceded in time by a unit thematizing dissent and the underground [Disent a underground].
A large number of memorial sites refer only in general to the Communist regime as a time of unfreedom [Symbolická pamětní místa]. We present museums and expositions separately [Muzea a expozice]. We have also documented forty memorial sites from the pre-1989 period, which to a large extent directly communicate with the memory of Communism after its fall [Pamětní místa před rokem 1989]. And finally, the last group consists of extinct memorial sites [Zaniklá pamětní místa], documenting the changeability, or lack of self-evidence, of permanent existence in public space.
Agents and Guardians of Memory
The memorial sites are initiated by a variety of actors – towns and municipalities, various organizations, associations and societies, such as the Union of Scouts and Girl Scouts, the Union of PTP (so-called technical auxiliary battalions), the Association of Czechoslovak Foreign Airmen 1939–1945, the Czech Union of Freedom Fighters, churches, political parties, as well as private individuals. By far the most important initiator is the Confederation of Political Prisoners the memory of which is imprinted most in the image of Czech Communism. The memory of political prisoners concentrates on the 1950s – the time of the harshest repression which the Communist regime resorted to in order to stabilize its power, justifying it with the Stalinist thesis of the intensification and aggravation of the class struggle along with the development of socialism. The various forms of persecution have “created” a central theme of today’s memory – the status of the political prisoner and his or her experience of the Communist regime, including methods of interrogation and fabrication of political trials, various forms of repression against family members, imprisonment, and efforts at legal, social and societal rehabilitation. In this respect, the first attempt to create and share the memory of the political prisoners of the 1950s as an integral part of own past is the period of the Prague Spring of 1968, when the Club 231 (the name refers to the Law for the Protection of the People’s Democratic Republic No. 231/1948 Coll.) and the PTP Union were founded. In the last phase of the period under review (i.e. until 2019), there is a generation change of the initiators of the memorial sites, accompanied, on the contrary, by a significant decline in the activity of the Confederation of Political Prisoners, caused by persistent internal conflicts.
Commemoration
There is a clear tendency in the relationship between the initiator and the character of the memorial site. While individual memorial sites frequently correspond to individual initiative, symbolic memorial sites are most often associated with “official” memory. Memorial sites created due to the initiative of individuals are a very interesting group, because they represent non-institutionalized, individual memory. Initially, it was mainly the sites of institutionalized memory that were promoted, the reason being also the need to install a memorial object in public space where those who contributed to the change of the political regime could be honoured on anniversary days. After all, part of this symbolism is the enactment of significant days commemorating the victims and heroes opposing the former regime. The form of the normative policy of remembering and commemorating Communism has, in fact, been negotiated by political representations since 1990 until today. Currently, the Day of the Struggle for Freedom and Democracy (November 17, since 1990, a national holiday since 2000), the Day of Remembrance for Victims of the Communist Regime (June 27, i.e. the day of Milada Horáková’s execution, since 2004), the Day of Remembrance of Jan Palach (January 16, since 2014), the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Invasion and Subsequent Occupation by the Warsaw Pact Forces (August 21, since 2020) and finally the Day of the Departure of the Occupying Forces (June 25, since 2022) are commemorated. In contrast, we are witnessing the rise of individual (regional) memorial sites as imprints of “unofficial” memory. However, their creation is also influenced by the inevitable ‘passing’ of important personalities which the society associates with the Communist era and the fall of the regime.
Temporality
A closer analysis of the memorial sites from 1990 shows that basically all the key motifs of the gradually constructed memory appear in the public space since the early days of the new regime. The victims of the intervention, the “living torches” of Jan Palach, Jan Zajíc and Evžen Plocek, the victims of the Iron Curtain, the suffering of political prisoners in Jáchymov camps, the martyrs and executions (Josef Toufar, Milada Horáková, etc.), the first symbolic memorial sites (generally dedicated to the victims of Communism) and the first commemorations of the events of November 1989 are commemorated. The dynamics of memorial sites established in the first half of the 1990s reflects the post-revolutionary enthusiasm, with the highest number of unveilings in 1993 associated with the peak of commemorative activity by the Confederation of Political Prisoners. The initiation and installation of many commemorative plaques was related to the support expressed by municipal and city authorities for the Confederation in the matter of recognition of the anti-Communist resistance and the preparation of a legislative norm, which, however, fell short of expectations of aspirations of political prisoners of the 1950s (Law on the Illegality of the Communist Regime and on Resistance Against it, No. 198/1993 Coll.). We also note a longer-term increase in memorial sites between 2011 and 2014, corresponding to the intensification of memory discourse in the media and political environment. The politicization and political instrumentalization of the discourse on the Communist past during the period of right-wing governments (2006–2013), which brought, among other things, the establishment of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (under Act No. 181/2007 Coll.) and the adoption of the Act on Participants in Resistance and Resistance to Communism (No. 262/2011 Coll.), probably had an impact on the number of newly established memorial sites. In principle, however, there may be other reasons for the more significant increase. The second highest number of unveilings (almost 50) in 2018 was certainly influenced – apart from the fact that the Czech Republic was commemorating 100 years of the founding of Czechoslovakia and other “eight” anniversaries (1948, 1968) – by the entry of two new commemorative projects into the public space: one dedicated to the victims of August 1968 and 1969 (Monuments to the Victims of Injustice), the other to the victims of repression by the Communist regimes (Last Address). Over fifty newly installed memorial sites in 2019 (of which over 30 were unveiled on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Communist regime) represent the absolute peak of commemorative activities over the entire period under review.
Regions
It is natural that the initiation of memorial sites is closely related to the authenticity of the site. With few exceptions, memorial sites commemorating the victims of the Iron Curtain or the existence and activities of the Border Guard can be found in regions close to the border; exceptions are represented by those commemorating victims who were detained at the state border and subsequently persecuted, for example, at their birthplace. Similarly, commemorations of the slave labour of political prisoners in uranium camps are concentrated in the Jáchymov and Příbram regions. The existence of such lieux de mémoire then clearly influences the overall picture of intentional commemoration, but to speak in this case of the distinctive memory of a particular region is certainly problematic. Even the memorial sites commemorating the victims of forced collectivization are, to a large extent, linked to authentic localities. However, a closer look reveals that the consequences of this nationwide campaign, which affected the entire countryside (apart from purely urban or industrial agglomerations), are only sporadically commemorated in some agricultural regions, while elsewhere they are disproportionately more visible. Despite certain quantitative or thematic differences in individual regions, the way in which the Communist period of Czech history is commemorated is virtually similar. This makes it possible to conclude that there are no regions of memory of Communism in the Czech Republic, or, in other words, that the whole country is one such region of memory.
Czech Pantheon of Communism
The Czech memorial sites commemorate executed political prisoners, citizens shot dead while attempting to cross the border, imprisoned, ordered to forced labour camps, forcibly evicted from their homes, disappeared behind the Iron Curtain, victims of the occupation in 1968, live torches, persecuted dissidents, and events associated with the fall of the regime. More than a half of them thematise acts of political persecution and criminal repressions of the Communist regime in the 1950s: “The Fifties” are unquestionably perceived as a synonym of the Communist persecution implemented on a mass scale against the Czech (and naturally also Slovak) societies; they are a symbolic lieu de mémoire. The Fifties are symbolized by executed lady politician Milada Horáková (1901–1950), priest Josef Toufar (1902–1950), tortured to death, and Heliodor Píka (1897–1949), an executed general and a prominent representative of the resistance during WWII, who, together with the first “live torch” Jan Palach (1948–1969), poet, singer, and émigré Karel Kryl (1944–1994), and Václav Havel (1936–2011), a dissident, actor, and symbol of the fall of Communism, represent the most frequently commemorated personalities in today´s Pantheon of Czech recollections of the Communist period.
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* For details see Markéta Devátá – Oldřich Tůma – Barbora Čermáková – Michaela Tučková – David Weber. Pamětní místa na komunistický režim v České republice. Prague, Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences 2021, ISBN 978-80-7285-248-2, pp. 5–34.
About the Project
The website was created under the project No. DF11P01OVV034 funded by the Ministry of Culture within the National and cultural identity programme (NAKI). It is being further developed with the support of the Czech Academy of Sciences within the Strategy AV21 research programmes.
