They shall-or shall not-pass?: Communist state borders in the Czech culture of remembrance after 1989
Abstract
This article analyses the formation of two opposed poles of the memory of Czechia's communist past that crystalized in that country after 1989. It focuses on the issue of the communist state's borders, which slowly developed into one of the country's most controversial conflicts of memory.
Anti-communist 'Iron Curtain' discourse established a new mainstream 'national memory' that points to the communist border regime as a prime example of non-democratic rule, which violated the values that came to undergird the liberal democratic order after 1989. Nevertheless, the Communist Party's traditional border discourse did not fade away after 1989.
It was sustained by communist politicians, party members and former border guards. Their version still influences the public memory of Czechoslovakia's state borders, stressing their legitimacy, legality, and ultimately the inevitable need to use force to protect them.
The search for unequivocal heroes and evil-doers in the communist state border regime of the former Czechoslovakia strengthens this split in the national memory and makes it very difficult to embrace its complexity. The existence of two opposing memory discourses that refute one another is not just an example of a conflict between groups over which memory is 'right'.
It also illustrates deep divisions in post-communist Czech society that still exist long after the watershed events of 1989.