Petra Hudek: Kto rozhoduje o minulosti? Osudy bratislavských pamätníkov po páde komunistického režimu

We invite you to a lecture by Petra Hudek, who will map the process of removing Bratislava’s monuments after the fall of the communist regime.

The fall of the communist regime in 1989 fundamentally changed the appearance of public space in Czechoslovakia. Symbols of political power, statues, and monuments became the subject of intense debate, iconoclastic interventions, and new interpretations. The lecture will map the process of removing Bratislava’s monuments, their transfer to museum depositories, and decisions about their future by city authorities, preservationists, and the public.

Using specific cases of Bratislava monuments, we will explain the formation of a new policy of memory in public space after 1989. The aim is to show how the physical and symbolic transformation of these artifacts became part of a broader process of social change and redefinition of collective memory.

Petra Hudek works at the Historical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in the Department of Contemporary History. Her research focuses on public space, sculptures and monuments from the socialist period, and museum exhibitions displaying the uncomfortable past. She is currently leading two research projects: the international project “Visual Representations of World War II in Museums, Memorials, and Commemorations in Central Europe” and the project “The Instrumentalization of History in Slovak Public Space in the 20th Century: The Politics of Memory in Times of Conflict, War, and Upheaval.” In 2026, her first monograph on Soviet Army memorials in the Czechoslovak public sphere after 1989 will be published.