Prague features many monuments to the Velvet Revolution (the fall of Soviet Communism some 25 years ago); the most moving to me is The Memorial to the Victims of Communism. Situated at the base of Petrin Hill in the “Lesser Town” (Mala Strana), the monument consists of a series of seven bronze figures descending a flight of stairs. The statues are progressively more broken and “decayed” the further away they are from you — losing extremities and having their bodies break apart, symbolic of how political prisoners were affected by Communism.
There is a bronze strip down the center of the memorial which highlights numbers of those directly impacted by communism:
- 205,486 arrested
- 170,938 forced into exile
- 4,500 died in prison
- 327 shot trying to escape
- 248 executed
The monument was unveiled in 2002, twelve years after the fall of communism, and is the work of Czech sculptor Olbram Zoubek.
