International Conference “20 Years After”

20 Years After Conference Concludes

Prague, October 8, 2009 – The two-day international scientific conference “20 Years After: Central and Eastern European Communist Regimes as a Shared Legacy,” organized by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, and financially supported by the European Union’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) concluded yesterday afternoon with a final panel in Prague’s Nostitz Palace summarizing the contributions of historians, political scientists and other experts. A range of provocative papers were presented at the conference, evaluating the process of coming to terms with the past in individual post-communist countries. Animated debates, not only after the individual panels, but also during the social gathering on the conference’s first evening and intermissions between panels, testified to the fact that a range of opinions and points of view exist on progress realized to date. The case of Slovenia demonstrates that not even representatives from one country agree on which regime was responsible for victims found concealed in mass graves, and how many of them exist. Marius Oprea, director of the Romanian Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes, surprised listeners with a 15-minute film revealing his and his colleagues‘ work in the exhumation of mass graves in Romania. He also spoke about his experiences on Czech Television on Tuesday morning. According to estimates, as many as 10,000 victims were buried in mass graves in Romania. Bulgarian historian and filmmaker Liliana Topouzova, of Canada’s University of Toronto, spoke about the fact that after the fall of the Bulgarian communist regime, it was discovered that an entire penal network of so-called Gulags had existed in Bulgaria.

20 Years After Conference Continues

Prague, October 7, 2009 – The international scientific conference “20 Years After: Central and Eastern European Communist Regimes as a Shared Legacy,” organized by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, and financially supported by the European Union’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) continued this morning for its second day in Prague’s Nostitz Palace. Martina Klicperová-Baker from the Institute of Psychology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Ivo Feierabend of San Diego State University opened the first panel, addressing lifestyles and the culture of every-day life under late communism, with a paper addressing what they have found to be the widespread phenomenon of post-communist syndrome in the Eastern European region. Klicperová-Baker stressed that the greatest threat increasingly appears to be indifference and ignorance among the young, concluding that the best investment in democracy will be in civic education. The further contribution of Professor Paulina Bren, of Vassar College in the USA, sparked a heated debate on post-communist memory in the Czech Republic related to the contemporary re-broadcast of the television program “Thirty Cases of Major Zeman,“ a mid-70s serial popularizing the activities of the then Secret Police. The conference‘s second panel focused on the conceptualization of history in primary, secondary, and tertiary education during the (post-) totalitarian period, with contributions from Czech, Serbian, Slovenian, and Romanian participants.

Programme

Programme of the conference (Wednesday, October 7, 2009)

Photogallery

Panel: Lifestyle(s) and the Culture of Everyday Life under Late Communism

Panel: The Conceptualization of History in Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Education during the (Post-)Totalitarian Period

Panel: “Old” Networks in Post-Communist Settings

Conclusion – Panel Moderators

Audiorecording

20 Years After Conference Has Commenced

Prague, October 6, 2009 – The international scientific conference “20 Years After: Central and Eastern European Communist Regimes as a Shared Legacy,” organized by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, and financially supported by the European Union’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) commenced this morning in Prague’s Nostitz Palace. Participants were welcomed by Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes Director Pavel Žáček. The conference was then inaugurated by Mirek Topolánek, who in his opening remarks emphasized the need to acknowledge history and the mechanisms of totalitarian regimes, in order to avoid repeating the atrocities committed by totalitarian regimes across Europe.

Programme

Programme of the conference (Tuesday, October 6, 2009)

Photogallery

Panel: „Transitional Justice“ (Prague, 10/6/2009)

Panel: Transformation of the Security Forces

Audiorecording:

Media Coverage

Twenty years after: central and eastern Europe coping with communist legacy (Radio Prague, 10/13/2009)
Communism Still Threat for Czech Republic – ODS Leader Topolanek (ČeskéNoviny.cz, 10/6/2009)
Return of the Communist regime to the Czech Republic is still a threat even 20 years after its fall. Czech Republic did more in order to come to terms with its totalitarian past than the rest of the region (Source: ČTK, 10/6/2009)