-
Chapter 10. God’s Warriors on Vítkov Hill
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Toppling Columns, Building a Capital in Revolutionary Prague w 10 Chapter 10 God’s Warriors on Vítkov Hill “Let’s be like Hus and Gottwald—strong and brave.” Josef Macek, Prague historian L ike the nation’s previous governments, that of the Czechoslovak Communist party invested major resources in symbols of its power. From red stars affixed to all state buildings to statues of fallen heroes of the Second World War, new emblems marked public space for the party that declared itself the exclusive ruler of postwar Czechoslovakia. Unsurprisingly, the Communist ideology of the postwar period emphasized rebirth and renewal. Weary Europe looked to the Left for the promise of a better future. Modernity, technology, and equality would replace the brutality and selfishness of capitalism and fascism. In Czechoslovakia, as in almost all European countries, scores of citizens joined the Communist Party and longed for the new. Yet, even in the postwar march toward the future, Czechoslovakia’s Communist leaders sought connection to the past. A bond with history legitimated the party’s place in the national trajectory. Marxism, of course, necessitated the ability to demonstrate that the country had indeed arrived at the Communist utopia, having successfully passed through previous stages of economic and political development; so, though the Communist movement was so often associated with internationalism, individual parties developed national ideologies and celebrated select moments of a particular nation’s past. They appropriated public spaces, rather than destroy all and build anew. Thus an incomplete project from the First Republic became the most sacred space in Communist Prague, housing the remains of deceased leaders, and works by leading Czechoslovak socialist realist artists. Vítkov Hill, the site 10 w 11 of Hussite general Jan Žižka’s victorious 10 battle, had been intended as a site for a national monument since the late nineteenth century. The hill loomed over Žižkov, Prague’s working-class district, the center of left-wing politics since the Habsburg period. It was in Žižkov pubs that František Kysela-Sauer had recruited workers to help tear down the Marian Column in 1918, and in 196 the district had strongly supported Communist politicians in the parliamentary elections. Žižkov’s residents were a major factor in the party’s success in this election, during which the Communist Party received 8 percent of the national vote, more than any other individual party. Czech Socialists with national sympathies, from several leftist interwar parties , had long looked to the revolutionary warrior as its hero, and scores of working -class voluntary organizations were named for the blind military genius. Thus, it was not particularly surprising when the party decided to complete the memorial. When the Nazis had invaded Czechoslovakia in 199, much of the structure was already finished, and sculptor Bohumil Kafka’s equestrian statue of Žižka was ready to be cast in bronze. Yet, during the first years of Communist rule, embracing Žižka as a party hero treaded on dangerous territory, religion. Of course, the official position of the party was atheism, but the history of the Bohemian reformation seemed too rich not to be mined: party leaders did not stray from the First Republic’s original intention, to honor and create a cult of death around the handful of Bohemian military successes in history; they merely expanded the tribute to include their great Slavic brothers in the Red Army and to situate Communism in the arc of Czech history.1 At the time the Communists took over the country and the monument, the site had already had a long, but not illustrious, history. In the late nineteenth century, the Austrian government had denied Czech nationalists’ efforts to erect a monument to Žižka’s memory, and when a memorial design contest was finally held in 191, the art jury found no entry worthy of selection. Originally planned simply as a monument to Žižka, the site took on broader dimensions after the declaration of independent Czechoslovakia, when nationalists proclaimed the need for a memorial in Prague of national liberation. This project was led mainly by the Czechoslovak legionnaires, who declared themselves the modern inheritors of Žižka’s legacy and juxtaposed their military exploits with medieval martial history. So, too, was the cult of death infused into the structure. The building was designed to house the cremated remains of legionnaires and of President Tomáš Masaryk, who however would decline the offer to occupy the black...