IN-PERSON: Prague – Section B

Abstract

The end of the Cold War and the reintegration of Europe after 1989 opened opportunities for new national, urban, and local identities to emerge. A major political transformation occurred in former communist countries, where the awakening movements helped to create new political power structures, symbols, and identities. It was this same process which ushered in the new nation-states, each now of course with its national capital city. In Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Berlin, Bratislava, Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, Minsk, Kiev, Ljubljana, Sarajevo, Skopje, Zagreb, and Chisinau the transition phase became vital: how to reconstruct the history of a post-socialist capital city to fit into the new integrated Europe and manifest this identity with new urban symbols and images, different from communist past. The capital cities of Eastern and Central Europe form an interesting group for further analysis on “transformations” or “transitions” as, so far, the focus on research on capital cities has been on the major modern western urban centres. One is less aware of the fact that the capitals of Central and Eastern Europe were closely networked with the big European cities before 1945. After the end of Cold War in 1981–1991, a closer European cooperation led to the rethinking of the ‘Western’ versus ‘Eastern’ influences on local identity. The capital cities in the Central and East Europe played an essential role in the national movements and in the creation of new political identities. The intention here is to illustrate how these capital cities carried out the ‘Westernization’ of their urban symbols, identities, and histories, based on analysis of Internet web sites. Digital material takes a central place in providing direct and fast information, especially related to countries, cities, and places. A comparative analysis shows how uniform has been the ‘Europeanization’ of the urban history of the capital cities of of Central and East Europe.