This paper analyses how the image of Great Moravia (a major Slavic geopolitical entity in 9th-century Central Europe) has been formed, transformed, and strategically used across different historical periods as a resource for social identity, political legitimacy, and cultural memory. It argues that what began as an archaeological and historical concept gradually became a symbolic repertoire of “spiritual” and “national” beginnings, repeatedly adapted to shifting social needs - from nineteenth-century Romanticism, through ideologically charged twentieth-century interpretations, to contemporary memory politics in an era of renewed nationalist polarisation.
Drawing on key frameworks of collective and cultural memory (e.g. Wertsch 2021), the paper conceptualises the past not as a stable set of facts but as something continuously “re-performed” through rituals, symbols, and narrative templates. This perspective helps explain why certain interpretive shortcuts endure, why ambiguity is often suppressed, and how coherent “Golden Age” plots acquire authority in public arenas.
The paper asks which narratives about Great Moravia are amplified or silenced in changing political climates and how authorised storylines circulate between scholarship, museums, heritage sites, education, and the media. It concludes with practical implications for sustaining open, critical, and inclusive archaeology while remaining publicly engaged: transparent handling of uncertainty, explicit separation of evidential claims from interpretive conjecture, and multi-vocal presentation strategies that reduce the risk of instrumentalisation and polarising identity politics.

Wertsch, James V., How Nations Remember: A Narrative Approach (New York, 2021; online edn, Oxford Academic, 22 Apr. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197551462.001.0001, accessed 16 Oct. 2025.

The study was supported by Czech Academy of Sciences by the Strategy AV21 research programme "Anatomy of European Society ”.

First Author: Marek Hladík

Co-Authors: Katarína Hladíková, Martin Neumann, Jakub Tamaškovič

Keywords:
Great Moravia
Collective and cultural memory
Heritage politics
Museums and public presentation
Nationalism and identity narratives