Prague, Oct 30 (CTK) – The celebrations of significant anniversaries next year may help develop a debate on the Czech state’s direction and the roots of its democracy, experts in Prague agreed at a conference organised by the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Foreign Affairs Ministry on Monday.
The conference is to bridge the gap between experts and politicians as well, Foreign Affairs Minister Lubomir Zaoralek (Social Democrats, CSSD), who attended it, said.
It should prevent the oversimplification of certain themes, such as the state and the nation, democracy, social equality or the relationship to Europe, Zaoralek added.
“The past is vanishing from our collective memory,” Deputy Culture Minister Anna Matouskova said at the start of the conference.
The anniversaries upcoming in 2018 should facilitate debates on the major events in the past 100 years, including the birth of the independent Czechoslovak state (1918), the Munich Agreement (1938), the Communist Coup of February 1948 and the division of Czechoslovakia (1992).
In May, the Czech cabinet approved the expenses of 400 million crowns for the commemoration and celebration of these anniversaries.
Matouskova said public opinion polls have shown since 1946 that Czechoslovakia’s foundation and the First Republic (1918-38) period are perceived as the second most significant boom of the Czech lands, right after the period of the rule of Czech King and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (1316-78).
The debates at the conference have revealed that this period is not perceived unambiguously by historians, however.
Experts’ views particularly differed on the first Czechoslovak President Tomas Garrigue Masaryk’s concept of the nation, on the nature of democracy at that time and on his attitude to minorities and churches.
Philosopher Vaclav Belohradsky, historian Jan Kren, sociologist Tereza Stockelova, art historian Milena Bartlova and many others took part in the debates preceding the conference in the first half of 2017.
