Conference on the Anniversary of the Fall of the Communist Regime in Czechoslovakia Begins Tomorrow

Prague, October 5, 2009

– The international conference “20 Years After: Central and Eastern European Communist Regimes as a Shared Legacy,” organized by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, and financially supported by the European Union’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) commences tomorrow, Tuesday, October 6, in Mala Strana’s Nostitz Palace. All conference details can be found online at: www.20yearsafter.eu. The conference is conceived as an open scientific platform and anticipates the unprecedented interest of the academic community. Over 70 contributors registered for the peer review process. A commission of international experts (the program committee of the conference) reviewed and evaluated the contributions, and the 35 best were selected for presentation at the Prague conference. Guests from Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Ukraine Austria, the USA and Canada have confirmed their attendance. Conference languages will be Czech and English (in simultaneous interpretation), with German as a third option on the first day. “The conference 20 Years After has thus became one of the first conferences at which speakers were selected based on a peer review process, which to this day is unfortunately not such a common occurrence in associated disciplines in the Czech Republic,” says one of the program committee members, Vojtěch Ripka, of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. 20 Years After is a notable international conference connected with the approaching 20th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain in Central and Eastern Europe, ushering in a host of commemorative events, exhibitions and conferences. The conference focuses on the legacy of the non-democratic past of Central and Eastern European countries, with a focus on less common themes and methodological approaches. Unlike the now more prevalent traditions, which focus mainly on “big” political history and primarily emphasize discontinuity, this conference launches into an examination of more ordinary daily patterns of behavior, and into the perspective of “old” social networks in post-communist circumstances. A host of renowned historians from around the world will participate, presenting papers and debating in the following discussion panels:

  1. Transitional Justice Coming to terms with the non-democratic past, from criminal prosecution through public discussion and symbolic acts – vetting, truth commissions, institutionalization of memory. Martin Mejstřík will speak in this section about the Czech judiciary after 1989.
  2. “Old” Networks in Post-Communist Settings Social networks after decades of systematic attempts at social engineering (politics and the public sphere, family networks, clientelism). The continuity or discontinuity of networks established during the totalitarian period.
  3. Transformation of the Security Forces Transformation process of one of the key pillars of the non-democratic system to support the democratic rule of law. Historians will illuminate the situations in Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and the Czech Republic.
  4. Conceptualization of History in Primary and Secondary Education during the (Post-) Totalitarian Period History as a tool of official governmental policies; political education; education in history and literature serving as indoctrination. Historians will elucidate, for example, problems in the education of contemporary history in schools in the countries of the former Yugoslavia.
  5. Lifestyle(s) and Culture of Everyday Life Under Late Communism Pop-culture, advertising, gastronomy, fashion and art in the late communist period and its recent reflections. Experts will address the contemporary intellectual legacy of film and theater, among others, from the final years of the communist regime.
  6. Roots of the fall of communism

ON TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE

The term “transitional justice,” not very well-known in the Czech context until now, grapples with the processes which are often encapsulated into the category “coming to terms with the past.” Transitional justice comprises a constellation of activities of transforming states and societies ranging from criminal-legal measures through symbolic acts of respect towards victims. Transitional justice is likewise a multidisciplinary scientific field capitalizing on knowledge and methods from historiography, political science, sociology, constitutional law and jurisprudence.

PARTICIPANTS OF NOTE:

  • Michael Kraus, Middlebury College, Vermont, USA. Coming to terms with former regimes and their legacies in Central and Eastern Europe.
  • Václav Veber, Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Czech Republic. Historiography of the third resistance at Czech universities twenty years after the fall of communism.
  • Aviezer Tucker, Gvirtzman Memorial Foundation Fellow, Czech Republic. The legacy of totalitarianism.
  • Jakub Jirsa, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Czech Republic. Guilt and Shame: two different variants of the transitional period (“transitional justice”).
  • Berthold Unfried, Institute for Economic and Social History, University of Vienna, Austria. Coming to terms with the past in the NDR as with a second German dictatorship: the investigation commission of the German Parliament on the German Democratic Republic.
  • Paulina Bren, Department of History, Vassar College, USA. Socialist identity and post-communist memory in television broadcasting in the Czech Republic.
  • Barbara Day, Senior Fellow and Treasurer, Prague Society for International Cooperation. Long-time executive director of the Jan Hus Educational Foundation and recipient of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her work in the “underground” university of the Jan Hus Foundation (she was recognized “for her service for British-Czech cultural relations”).
  • Marius Oprea, Director of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania. Oprea has faced several unprecedented attacks against himself and his family due to the nature of his work. One of the tasks of the Institute he manages is to reveal mass graves from the period of the Nicolae Ceauşescu dictatorship.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me should you have further questions or requests. Jiří Reichl, Spokesperson Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes gsm: +420 – 725 787 524 e-mail: press@ustrcr.cz