Begetting & Remembering: Creating a Slovak Collective Memory in the Post-Communist World

The archival reading room at Matica slovenská (the Slovak Cultural Organization) closed early 7 November 1973. Researchers were asked to leave so that Matica’s employees could join the march to celebrate the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. The employees were in a gay mood as they left, laughing and talking to one another. They were mandatory volunteers to celebrate an event that was said to have set off a wave of self-determination that extended into Slovakia. Throughout that day and into the next, the Czech and Slovak media reported with great fanfare similar marches across Czechoslovakia. Thirty-two years later, only