‘The Past is the Battleground of our Contemporaries’

The Institute of Contemporary History of the ASCR together with the National Museum and the Czechoslovak Documentation Centre organized an international conference entitled The Past is the Battleground of our Contemporaries to mark the eightieth birthday of the founder and first director of the Institute of Contemporary History, Professor Vilém Prečan. The conference took place at Czernin Palace on January 24–25, 2013. The proceedings was divided into five blocks reflecting Prečan’s life-long professional interests: the Second World War; Slovakia; Czecho-Slovak relations; political exile; opposition and dissent; the building of the discipline of contemporary history in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic.