The Politics of Memory: Constructing National Identity in the Czech Lands, 1945 to 1948
The Politics of Memory: Constructing National Identity in the Czech Lands, 1945 to 1948
Author(s): Nancy M. WingfieldSubject(s): Political history, Government/Political systems, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989), Sociology of Politics, Politics of History/Memory, Politics and Identity
Published by: SAGE Publications Ltd
Keywords: Politics of memory; constructing national identity; Czechoslovakia; collective forgetting; postwar period; national memory;
Summary/Abstract: In his famous novel about the normalization that followed the Prague Spring, Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera refers to the former Czechoslovak president Gustav Husak as "the president of forgetting" in the wake of 1968. Husak was not, however, the first president to preside over collective forgetting in Czechoslovakia after 1945. Edvard Bend, with the support of most Czechs, also presided over collective forgetting in the aftermath of the postwar expulsion of the Germans, when virtually an entire people was removed-and, insofar as possible, expunged from Czech consciousness. [...]
Journal: East European Politics and Societies
- Issue Year: 14/2000
- Issue No: 02
- Page Range: 246-267
- Page Count: 22
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF