Collective trauma and violation of the existing socio-cultural frame of meanings as a decisive precondition for November 1989 events: Jan Palach, Martin Śmíd and collective memory in real socialist Czechoslovakia

Abstract

The weekend following the violent clash of students with police on 'Narodní třída' a rumor about the death of Martin Šmíd spread, mourning and grieving his supposed death led to the nation-wide show-up of discontent with the existing regime; the first stance of discontent on the national scale exposed since the events following the tragic self-imposed death of Jan Palach in 1969.

Keywords

• collective memory
• collective/cultural/social trauma
• 17th November
• Jan Palach
• Martin Šmíd