Prague As a Cold War City And Its Global Entaglements
TUESDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER 2025
09:30 – Welcome Words
Prof. Martin Holý, Director of the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences
09:45 – Introduction: Challenges of Research on Cold War Prague
Maroš Timko (Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
Mikuláš Pešta (Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences; Charles University)
10:15 – Coffee Break
10:30 – PANEL I: INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND ACTORS IN COLD WAR PRAGUE AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Chair: Mikuláš Pešta (Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences; Charles University)
Kateřina Březinová (Metropolitan University Prague): Third World Encounters in a Second World City? The House of Cuban Culture in Cold War Prague
Rosamund Johnston (University of Vienna): Omnipol Headquarters and the Aesthetics of the Arms Trade in Cold War Prague
Manuela Pacillo (Scuola Normale Superiore): Justice in Print: Czech Press Coverage of the Nuremberg Trials and the Construction of Post-War Political Imaginaries
12:30 – Lunch Break
13:30 – PANEL II: PRAGUE AS A HUB OF (WESTERN) EUROPEAN COMMUNISM AND DISSENT
Chair: Sarah Lemmen (Complutense University of Madrid)
Eduardo Abad García (University of Oviedo): Capital of the Healthy Forces of Communism: Prague and the Transnational Network of Orthodox Communist Dissent during the Cold War (1968–1989)
Diego Ruiz Panadero (Complutense University of Madrid): A global city for “world peace”: Prague as the hub of transnational experiences for Spanish communists and Visual Propaganda (1948-1968)
Xavier María Ramos Diez-Astrain (Complutense University of Madrid): The Paris Commune lives on in Prague. Prague as the symbolic core of dissident Marxism and Communism. The Spanish example
15:30 – Discussion
WEDNESDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER 2025
09:30 – PANEL III: COLD WAR PRAGUE AS A GLOBAL POLITICAL STAGE
Chair: Jan Koura (Charles University; Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
Lukáš Perutka (Palacký University Olomouc): Do not eat our meat! How Czechoslovak internationalism led to an international crisis in Prague in 1964
Františka Schormová (Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences): “The Caribbean Writer and Exile”: Intellectual Migration, Decolonization, and Jan Carew’s Prague
Veronika Rollová (Masaryk University): In Pursuit of the Living Environment: The 1967 Prague Congress of the International Union of Architects. Socialist Humanism in a Global Context
11:30 – Coffee Break
11:45 – KEYNOTE LECTURE
Prof. Geoffrey Roberts (University College Cork): Three Cold War Cities: Prague, Vienna, Budapest and the Struggle for Peace
12:30 – Closing Remarks and Discussion
This workshop is organized by the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
This workshop is being financially supported by the program “AV21 Strategy: Anatomy of European Society, History, Tradition, Culture, Identity”.