TOTALITARIAN TOWN - A VISIT TO THE COMMUNIST PAST | 2010-01-07

On the 18th of November, just one day after the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, we arranged for our high school students to visit the “Totalitarian Town”. This was an experimental project, a throwback to the past, taking place at the Masaryk Square in Ostrava. The project’s purpose was to present the past to the students in its full scope, i.e. not just the political aspects of living under communism but also the shape of everyday life, including culture, both material and spiritual, and economic as well as social activities that were an indelible part of that experience.

 

Students could try out things like filling in the foreign currency application form, an essential part of the almost impossible effort of traveling to the West; they could purchase hard-currency coupons that would allow the bearer to buy Western goods in special shops known as Tuzex; they could inspect the coinage and banknotes of the day, photographs, everyday items, etc. The project stood out for its efforts to show the ever-present background against which life then evolved: the clothes, music, food, film, and literature of the time… The Masaryk Square sported a mobile shop (for those living in villages far away from cities) and visitors could listen to 1980s tunes or watch old movie commercials. What may have met with the biggest success was a retro fashion show.


Ms. Táňa Micková

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