„Do služeb lidu!“
„Do služeb lidu!“

Historical Legacy as a Part of the Ideal of “Socialistic City” in the 1950s

Summary/Abstract: The declared aim of a physical and symbolic transformation of cities in post-war eastern bloc became a general vision of “socialistic city” which was supposed to create a corresponding environment for the life and work of the coveted “new man.” Most of the settlements in Czechoslovakia were slightly damaged therefore the plans for modernizations had to follow extant building and urbanistic context. The emphasis on the national history and seemingly apolitical projects of historical reconstructions were justified by the power elite of that times, experts and media as an ideologically and functionally natural part of the socialistic project. Wide category of “historical heritage,” that is chosen domestic sights and traditions, were supposed to fulfil three main functions in the 1950s. In the context of Marx-Leninist doctrine, they represented an effective part of the communistic self-legitimating politics (where communists represented “inheritors of national traditions”). In the context of architecture, they became a required model and inspiration of contemporary production (in the spirit of the soviet doctrine of so-called socialistic realism). In the context of historic preservation, the ideologically biased propagation of historical sights was supposed to raise up citizens towards the values of “socialistic patriotism.”

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