Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Czechs after Communism
Czech survivors of communist prisons (honored by the
Monument to Victims of Communism Who Survived, listed on
page 96) feel a sense of injustice. Following World War II, many
of the Czechs who collaborated with the Nazis were brought
to justice. In contrast, after communism fell in 1989, few indi-
viduals responsible for the crimes committed by the communist
regime faced retribution. In fact, when the country's industrial
infrastructure was privatized in the early 1990s, the former
Communist Party big shots used their connections to take con-
trol of some of the country's new capitalist enterprises. Many
of the old Party leaders morphed into the bosses of the new
Czech economy.
The Czech Republic was the first post-communist country
to ban informants of the secret police from public office (a policy
called
lustrace
, or “lustration”). They were also the first to outlaw
the propagation of communism (and other totalitarian ideolo-
gies). Even so, efforts to enforce this legislation have been less
than successful. Many former agents have destroyed evidence,
while others contend that they were not aware of their own
cooperation.
In the early 1990s, stalwart members of the Communist
Party fended of attempts at reform and preserved a fossil of an
institution that still draws about 15 percent of votes in national
elections. Today's “vanguards of progress” no longer preach
class warfare, but instead they blend empty rhetoric (“We have
the door in the right corner of the garden by the
sala terena.
You'll l l
pass into a small courtyard surrounded by what once was the resi-
dential part of the palace. Today, the upper chamber of the Czech
Parliament meets inside.
Cost and Hours:
Garden—free, April-Oct daily 10:00-18:00,
closed Nov-March; Palace—usually closed to the public.
Near the Garden:
For a terraced Baroque garden to com-
pare to this Renaissance one, visit the
Vrtba Garden
(Vrtbovská
Zahrada, 100 Kč, daily 10:00-18:00; just south of Little Quarter
Square, on Karmelitská before the Church of St. Mary the
Victorious—see below).
South of Little Quarter Square, to Petřín Hill
Karmelitská street, leading south (along the tram tracks) from
Little Quarter Square, is home to these sights.
Church of St. Mary the Victorious (Kostel Panny Marie
Vítězné)
—This otherwise ordinary Carmelite church displays
Prague's most worshipped treasure, the Infant of Prague
(Pražské
Jezulátko). Kneel at the banister in front of the tiny lost-in-gilded-
