Prague, March 28 (CTK) – The Czech state will spend 400 million crowns on the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of establishment of independent Czechoslovakia and the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 2018, CTK has learnt.
The invasion crushed Prague Spring, a communist-led reform movement, on August 21, 1968.
The independent Czechoslovak Republic was established after the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy on October 28, 1918.
Next year, Prague will also mark the 25th anniversary of the independent Czech Republic, which together with the Slovak Republic are successor states to Czechoslovakia, which was divided as from January 1993.
According to the document, which has not yet been approved, 172 events are to be held within the anniversaries, 52 of which will be organised in cooperation with Slovakia.
A major project of the celebrations will be a joint Czech-Slovak exhibition. It will be guaranteed by the National Museum in Prague on the Czech side and the Slovak National Museum and the Slovak National Gallery on the Slovak side.
The National Technical Museum in Prague will stage an exhibition “Made in Czechoslovakia 1918-1992 – industry, which conquered the world.”
The Museum of Art in Olomouc, north Moravia, is preparing a project with partners from Slovakia, Hungary and Poland which will present artistic movements and trends in Central Europe around 1918.
The Czech Philharmonic will give an open-air concert marking the centenary of Czechoslovakia. It will perform Czech composer Janacek’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen in a concert version in Prague and New York and it will prepare an exhibition “Bedrich Smetana – My Country” called after Smetana’s cycle of symphonic poems.
The Foreign Ministry is preparing thematic exhibitions in 20 languages, conferences, lectures and discussion-meetings on Czech statehood reflecting the disintegration of Austria-Hungary and the post-war arrangement of Europe.
Self-rule authorities across the country will receive financial assistance to stage events in regions as well.
($1=24.813 crowns)
