Celebrating Liberation: The Commemoration and Instrumentalisation of the End of the Second World War in Contemporary Czech and Slovak Politics

We were both born in Pilsen in 1986. In those days, a few years before the fall of Communism, one could not say in public that Pilsen was liberated by American and Belgian troops at the end of the Second World War. The party’s official narrative said that Pilsen, just as the rest of Czechoslovakia, was liberated by the Soviets.

Vladimír: Sometime in the early 1990s, I might have been around six years old, I went with my family to an exhibition in the maashaus of the historical building of the Pilsen city hall. Besides other things, there was an illustrated map of the Pilsen centre. The street, which was named Americká třída (American Avenue) after the communist regime fell, had a drawing of a jeep full of American soldiers waving the American flag. I remember asking my parents why there were American soldiers in Pilsen.

Petr: As a little child, I remember going regularly (I guess) to the celebrations commemorating the liberation of Pilsen with my parents. My memories of this event are rather fragmentary: a lot of people and noise, military vehicles, candy floss of a disgusting pink colour. At the same time, I remember the following bit – I remember that during the celebrations, someone said to someone else near me that they were finally enjoying the festivities because nobody believed the talk that the liberators were Soviet soldiers dressed as Americans anyway.

Vladimír: At that time, I played in a youth brass orchestra, which often performed at various festivities. Somewhere around 2000, together with members of Sokol and the Scouts, war veterans, and military enthusiasts, we took part in the parade accompanying the convoy of historical vehicles. The traffic was stopped in the city centre, and the parade passed through the street, crossing the whole centre of Pilsen. We played marching music for the whole two or three kilometres of the parade’s route. I remember the weather being extremely hot for early May. I dragged my heavy tuba, and the only part of the celebrations I was aware of was the heat and my wish to be anywhere else.

Now after some time has passed, we remember mainly the bizarre nature of the situation in Komárno. In the middle of a roundabout surrounded by a grey (post)socialist concrete housing complex, the said statue was unveiled, standing on a massive pedestal, and completely bronze-plated.

We have a different, although similarly curious, experience from Devin where we met a bookseller during the celebrations of the Slovak State, whose stand offered obscure books published by Matica slovenská which presented a “scientific” proof that the Slovaks are an ancient nation because they have had the lactase enzyme allowing them to digest dairy products for over 10,000 years.

At the end of August, we went on the second trip, this time to Banská Bystrica, which we have visited many times since on different occasions. Before the first journey, however, we did not have a completely clear idea of where the city was located and what made it so specific. During our first visit, we observed the celebrations of the Slovak National Uprising anniversary, again with many members of the Slovak political elite present. The research in Komárno and Banská Bystrica resulted in our first paper, among other things, dealing with the political extent of the celebrations.