Abstract
The paper maps the development of Czech museums and monuments created since 1990 to commemorate the period of socialist dictatorship. During the 1990s, such monuments and museums have been developed exclusively at the instigation of memorial organizations; indeed, it was not until the turn of the millennium that the Government approved the creation of a memorial to the Vojna labor camp.
The period since 2008 has been characterized by the establishment of private museums and the revival of discussions about dilapidated monuments. The museums created have been all but exclusively dedicated to commemorating repression, while the topic of daily life is completely absent from them.
The start of the 1990s was marked by both the public and the state turning away from those museum versions of contemporary history that were tainted by their association with the previous regime, as well as by the internal crippling of traditional museum institutions. Since 1990, no permanent exhibits about the period from 1948 to 1989 have been directly initiated by those institutions.
The relatively low number of museums dedicate to this time period is also due to a lack of authentic sites for them. State engagement in such efforts since the end of the 1990s was accelerated by requests from municipalities and memorial organizations, by the increased preparedness of experts, and by the interest of the minister of culture, as a result of which the Government launched its monument rehabilitation program (2000).
However, the author argues that a determining influence over such state involvement was the return of historical topics to the public discourse, primarily the postwar displacement of the Germans and the actions of the Czechoslovak State Security Forces. The author argues that this revived struggle over memory is reflected in a strong emphasis on the literal reconstruction of the past by erecting replicas of buildings or entire areas, a specific characteristic of Czech memorials.