Today’s Kinsky Square in Smichov was called the Square of Soviet Tankers during the totalitarian era. And lest we doubt it, there was a massive granite pedestal in the middle of the square and on it was installed a Russian tank with the number 23 – including the legend that it was the first Soviet tank to come to liberate Prague.

Only after the Velvet Revolution could we learn the truth. The first Russian tank to enter Prague was number 24, and it was not in Smichov, but in Klárov (where the Malostranská metro station is today). This tank was destroyed and its commander was fell.

Tank number 23 conquered the Old Town Hall. However, it was a T-34 type, battered and damaged. The Russians decided that there would be a nicer and more modern tank on the pedestal, which did not take part in the battle for Prague. It was called IS-2 (according to the dictator Stalin), and because the number 23 fought for the Old Town Square, the number 23 was painted on it. This tank stood on Smíchov Square for 45 years and was part of the legend of how the whole of Czechoslovakia was liberated by the Soviet Union army.

(When the USSR troops suppressed the anti-communist uprising in Hungary in 1956, the Russians were dismayed that the Hungarians were using tanks from such memorials. To prevent this from happening here, the engine and gearbox of the Smíchov tank were removed and the tank was “hollow” and immovable.)

After the Velvet Revolution, we could start saying loudly that Pilsen had been liberated by the Americans and that it was by agreement of the victorious powers – if there had been no agreement, the Americans would have been in Prague a few days earlier than the Soviet soldiers.

In 1991, sculptor David Černý painted the Smíchov tank pink. The Russian government protested, David Černý was arrested for rioting and the tank was repainted green. Three days later, 15 MPs painted the tank pink again. A few months later, the tank was removed from the square and a fountain called “The Fall of Time Fountain” was built in its place in 2002.

On 21 August 2018, on the 50th anniversary of the Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia, David Černý installed a torso of a tank on Kinský Square – a green tank with a white stripe like the Warsaw Pact tanks that occupied us in 1968. It’s only a part of the tank that suggests the rest might be buried in the ground. Perhaps it could also be interpreted as saying that we must be careful that Russian tanks do not reappear in our country.

David Černý’s torso of the tank serves as the same memento even in the time of Russian aggression in Ukraine. It is painted yellow and blue, with a white stripe in the middle. Everyone in the world today knows why. Let us hope that the end of this aggression is fast approaching and that we will be able to see the tank torso in Smíchov only as a work of art again.

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David Černý’s torso of the tank serves as the same memento even in the time of Russian aggression in Ukraine. It is painted yellow and blue, with a white stripe in the middle. Everyone in the world today knows why. Let us hope that the end of this aggression is fast approaching and that we will be able to see the tank torso in Smíchov only as a work of art again.
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