Velvet Revolution

Excerpts from Timothy Garton Ash in The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of ‘89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague 

 

“Students started it. Small groups of them had been active for at least a year. They edited faculty magazines. They organized discussion clubs. They worked on the borderline between official and unofficial life. Many had contacts with the opposition, all read samizdat. Some say they had formed a conspiratorial group called “The Ribbon” – the Czech “White Rose.” But they also worked through the official youth organization, the SSM. It was through the SSM that they got permission to hold a demonstration in Prague on 17 November, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the martyrdom of Jan Opletal, a Czech student murdered, in Prague’s second district, with speeches and tributes at the cemetery.

 

“But the numbers grew, and the chants turned increasingly against the present dictators in the castle. The demonstrations decided – perhaps some had planned all along – to march to Wenceslas Square, the stage for all the historic moments of Czech history, whether in 1918, 1948, or 1968. Down the hill they went, along the embankment of the River Vltava, and then, turning right at the National Theatre, up Narodní avenue into the square. Here they were met by riot police, with white helmets, shields and truncheons, and by special anti-terrorist squads, in red berets. Large groups were cut off and surrounded, both along Narodní and in the square. They went on chanting “Freedom” and singing the Czech version of “We Shall Overcome.” Those in the front line tried to hand flowers to the police. They placed lighted candles on the ground and raised their arms, chanting, ‘We have bare hands.” But the police, and especially the red-berets, beat men, women and children with their truncheons.

 

“This was the spark that set Czechoslovakia alight. During the night from Friday to Saturday – with reports of one dead and many certainly in hospital – some students determined to go on strike. On Saturday morning they managed to spread the word to most of Charles University, and to several other institutions of higher learning which immediately joined the occupation strike. (Patient research will be needed to reconstruct the precise details of this crucial moment.) On Saturday afternoon they were joined by actors, already politicized by earlier petitions in defence of Václav Havel, and drawn in directly by the very active students from the drama and film academies. They met in the Realistic Theatre. Students described the “massacre,” as it was now called. The theatre people responded with a declaration of support which not only brought the theatres out on strike – that is, turned their auditoria into political debating chambers – but also, and, so far as I could establish, for the first time, made the proposal for a general strike on Monday, 27 November, between noon and two p.m. The audience responded with a standing ovation…

 

“The revolution was thus well under way, indeed rocking around the clock. And its headquarters was [sic] a just a hundred yards from the bottom of Wenceslas Square, in that theatre called the Magic Lantern.”[1]

For more information, visit The National Security Archive on the Velvet Revolution

 

Velvet Divorce

Excerpts from Sharon J. Wolchik in “The Politics of Transition and the Break-up of Czechoslovakia

 

“The break-up of the Czechoslovak federation reflected the influence of many factors. The roots of the tensions between Czechs and Slovaks go back to the earlier history of the two groups and the differing nature of economic and national development that each experienced as part of separate, larger political units. They also reflect the different impact of communism on each region, particularly in the economic sphere, and the much harsher impact of the move to the market in Slovakia that resulted from the fact that most of Slovakia’s industrialization occurred during the communist era… political factors also contributed. Important as the factors noted above were as conditioning factors, the end of the Czechoslovak state was a political decision that was shaped in critical ways by the structure of the political system and the decisions of political leaders and citizens. These in turn reflected the impact of the economic, social and psychological transitions that followed the end of communist rule, as well as the particular characteristics of a political system that was in transition…

 

“As the discussion above has illustrated, the values and orientations of citizens of the Czech and Slovak republics different in many important ways prior tot he creation of two independent states. These differences, which were not limited to views concerning the organization of the state, reflect the influence of each people’s history and levels of economic development, as well as the legacy of the communist period.”[2]

 

References

[1] Timothy Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of ‘89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague (New York City, New York: Random House, 1990), 79-81; 84.

[2] Sharon J. Wolchik, “The Politics of Transition and the Break-up of Czechoslovakia. In The End of Czechoslovakia,” in The End of Czechoslovakia, ed. Jiří Musil (Budapest, Hungary: Central European University Press, 1997), 225; 238-40.