Collective memory is one of the constitutive factors of contentious and politically motivated mobilizations taken by different actors, be it political parties, social movements or individual agents when seeking public support or legitimacy, or just achieving their goals. In post-communist countries these actors often strive to mobilize participants, supporters or even opponents using references to the Communist past. In other words mobilization implies imposing particular understanding of the situation and consequent agency related to the shared definition of the past. Existing research on the legacies of Communism in post-socialist countries stems mostly from political history and collective memory studies. However, these often neglect the analysis of how exactly communist legacy is used to achieve strategic political goals and legitimation of collective action objecting to or supporting various public policies.
In this paper we strive for addressing this gap. We aim at identifying and exploring the anti-communist framing of publicly raised claims which are thematically unrelated to the Communist past and the way it resonates with popular images of the Communism and Communist era in the Czech Republic. In particular we want to answer following questions: On what occasions and in connection with which public policies/claims is anti-communist framing used? How is the anti-communist framing constructed and how does the anti-communist framing resonate with popular images and understanding of Communism, Communist era in the Czech Republic and related matters?
To achieve this goal, we aim at utilizing various sources. The basic overview is provided by the existing protest event data retrieved from electronic archives of The Czech News Agency (ČTK) between 1990 and 2010. We focus mainly on codes for collective participants and organizers, main issues and framing, target of the claim and its scale, and repertoire. This data set is supplemented with various documents, e.g. news reports, declarations, press releases, or manifestos related to the actors involved in the protest. At the same time we rely on existing studies as well as other relevant sources that provide us with popular images and understanding of the Communism and Communist era in the Czech Republic after 1989.
