Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(3):276-288

And this is that beautiful country... Destruction of settlements in the Czech Republic in the second half of the 20th century in a Central European context

Karel Kuča

The full-scale destruction of the historical part of the royal city of Most for surface coal mining in 1967-1984 is the best-known large-scale destruction of a settlement that took on extraordinary proportions in the second half of the 20th century in the Czech Republic's. Even more settlements disappeared due to the establishment of military zones, the closed border zones, and the ethnic cleansing of the formerly German-speaking borderlands. Other villages and towns disappeared beneath the waters of new dam reservoirs. The article discusses the overall balance of this damage and attempts to find a comparison in central Europe.
It is possible that although comparable examples of devastated areas due to the existence of military areas, surface mining, flooding, or displacement for other reasons can be found in a number of Central European countries similar to the Czech Republic, nowhere else did such a concentration occur as in the Czech Republic, nor did they take up such a large area of the country. In the vast majority the cases, this was the result of an attempt to build a socialist (and ethnically homogenous) society. It can be stated that the destruction of the settlement structure characteristic of especially the Czech Republic's southwest, west, and northwest border regions is quite extraordinary, at least in the context of Central Europe. The reason for this is the fact that these areas combined all of the major reasons for which the settlements were terminated: surface coal mining, dam reservoirs, military facilities, and the displacement of the border zone population, combined with efforts to create an impermeable western border with ethnic cleansing. Of the Soviet bloc states, the Czech Republic achieved quite an extraordinary situation concerning the destruction of settlements along the border. Nothing to this extent occurred in the German Democratic Republic or Hungary because there was no displacement of the population (German, Hungarian) along the western German or Austrian border there, so the border zone there was very narrow. The only apt comparison is the Polish liquidation of Ukrainian settlements in the country's southeast, albeit this was only the ethnic cleansing of the area but was not related to a border zone (between the two socialist countries).
The elimination of settlements on a larger or smaller area of the Czech Republic or even elsewhere can not theoretically be ruled out in the future; this would presume certain narrowly economic or other interests over the protection of the environment in its broadest understanding.

Keywords: destruction of settlements; destruction of historical landscape; Czech Republic; Central Europe

Published: September 1, 2016  Show citation