Paměť pražského jara v českém veřejném prostoru padesát let poté
The memory of the Prague Spring in the Czech public space 50 years after

Summary/Abstract: The article is based on a presentation delivered at the conference "The Prague Spring 50 Years After: Great Crises of Communist Régimes in Central Europe in a Transnational Perspective", which took place in Prague in June 2018. The authoress examines commemorations of the Prague Spring in 1968, monitoring the filling of the public space of the Czech Republic by memorials, statues, memorial plaques and other artefacts reminiscent of events in 1968 and 1969. She deals with their initiation, dedications, symbolical contents, and social reflections. The ninety of so memorial places created between 1989 and 2019 to commemorate events and personalities of the Prague Spring represent a significant segment of the gradually built memory of Communism. It is the second most frequently remembered period in the internal chronology connected with the Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, which in terms of the number of commemorative artefacts is surpassed only by the 1950s. The authoress presents a basic list of topics which the memorial places are reminiscent of (Prague Spring personalities, victims of the military intervention in August 1968 and the suppression of riots in August 1969, self-immolation of Jan Palach and other “live torches”, restoration of memorials of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and planting of “Trees of the Republic”), comparing some of them with similar commemorations in the Slovak Republic. She also pays attention to manifestations of anti-Russian sentiments and the politicization of the past, which accompany commemorative activities related to the Soviet intervention as the central topic of the Prague Spring memory.

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