GAUK Matějka

This project is devoted to a comparison of the commemoration of historical anniversaries in the Czech lands in the 1980s and 1990s. Often the same historical anniversaries were celebrated in the 1980s and were also commemorated in the 1990s (in fact, they are still intensively commemorated today). The project, therefore, asks what impact the democratic revolution in 1989 and the associated change of political regime in the Czech Republic had on the culture of remembrance and the way Czech society relates to its past. Specifically, the project focuses on the commemoration of the end of the Second World War. What themes have emerged in relation to the commemoration of this event, and what actors have been influential in shaping its public commemoration? The methodological framework of the thesis is research on the culture of remembrance, or memory studies, and partly also transformation studies. The project is planned as a three-year project. In the first and second years, a methodological study, archival research, and analysis of the findings will take place. In the second year, manuscripts of two studies, one Czech language and the other English language, will be produced, with the expectation that both will be accepted for publication by the end of the project.