Padesátá léta (1950s)

A new exhibition in the Historical Building of Prague’s National Museum introduces visitors to a dark decade of Czechoslovak history when the country was decimated by totalitarianism and controlled by the party apparatus. At the same time, there was an era of post-war optimism and the vain hope among some people that they were building a better tomorrow.

The 1950s is one of the bleakest periods in modern Czech history. The ruling Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was responsible for political trials, judicial murders, lawlessness, and the liquidation of democratic principles of state administration, according to the exhibition’s curators.