Memory, Media and Czechoslovak Exile Post- August 1968

• In Event: Memory and Exile: World War II and Cold War, Czechoslovak and Hungarian Examples

Abstract

An exploration of the relationship between individual and collective memory and the realities of migration is difficult without an exploration of the media coverage of various groups of refugees in countries, where they attempt to integrate into the majority society. This paper explores the topic through research on media representation of the large-scale wave of refugees from communist Czechoslovakia after the occupation of the country by the Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. Refugees from Czechoslovakia in the West began to create an exile or surrogate public sphere. The gradually established exile media became an integral part of this sphere; it linked refugees scattered in a diaspora around the world with information creating a framework for sharing stories, experience and dispersed memories.

Author

• Petr Orság, Palacký U Olomouc (Czech Republic)