Authors

Discussion

In early 2021, in the vicinity of the long-gone monument to Stalin on Prague’s Letná Hill, Czech archaeologists uncovered the remains of a forced-labour camp that housed “workers press-ganged into building it.” (Tait, 2021). Previously, the existence of the camp stood unknown. The colossal monument to the Soviet leader that had been theatrically demolished in 1962 after only seven years of existence today is a site permanently ‘under construction’. Through an analysis of the treatment of Stalin’s monument during the second half of the twentieth century and today—as well as the events surrounding the existence and uncovering of the forced labour camp— this paper will delve into the contemporary era creation of urban and political identities and negotiations of the communist past as exhibited in one capital’s built environment. In this paper, I seek to expand the discourse on the treatment of the Cold War era’s political and urban heritage in the twenty-first century. I look to answer the questions of what the Stalin monument has signified throughout different historical periods and what are its shifting values in a country eager to forget its communist past yet not ready to acknowledge its multi-fold meanings. In Prague, the second half of the twentieth century is reckoned as an era of oppression and unwanted foreign rule; it is seen as an atrocious period best ‘left behind.’ I argue that this notion is flawed and demagogic, and I further argue that r