ABSTRACT
Nearing the three-decade mark since the fall of State Socialist political regimes, which swept the Central Europe during 1989, societies of the former Socialist Bloc are continuing to come to terms with their past. The symbol which is most extensively associated with the Prague Spring episode in the Slovak political discourse is ‘freedom.’ Indeed, not accidentally. When Slovak politicians discuss the Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact invasion, they seldom fail to acknowledge the freedom of the brief era and remind their audience that this freedom was lost after the traumatic invasion. While interpretation of the possibility of freedom in socialism does relate to the situation as well as the future, it is indeed concerned with the history of the Slovak nation. Cultural traumas, however, carry the potential to be actualized and galvanize powerful, morally imbued metaphors pertinent to political affairs. As have seen, the symbol of the Prague Spring remains alive, if usually dormant, in the Slovak political discourse.
