Dreams of freedom and democracy, fulfilled

This is what 1989 meant for several generations of Czechs and Slovaks. It was a time of political upsets, but best known for the ‘post-November’ Velvet Revolution. This is where the real road to the re-democratization of Czechoslovak society began. 2019 marks the 30th anniversary of events that fundamentally transformed the life of everyone living in the former Czechoslovakia; an opportunity to reflect. It had all begun a lot earlier.

Czechoslovakia behind the Iron Curtain

In a world polarized after WWII by the Soviet-American Cold War, Czechoslovakia found itself behind the Iron Curtain. Its further development was for decades steered by the might of the Soviet Union. The inter-war Democratic Republic period was supposedly to be forgotten forever.

It was only the Sixties, and especially the events of 1968, known as the Prague Spring, that showed the depth of freedom-loving feeling in society. But the period of ‘socialism with a human face’ was not given a second chance. The occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces, headed by the Soviet Army in August 1968, ended the aspirations for the more liberal approach by the domestic Communist Party then led by Alexander Dubček. The subsequent ‘Normalization’, as the process of returning to pro-Soviet obedience came to be called, was nothing more than the reaffirmation of long-standing practices, this time under the baton of Leonid Brezhnev.

Charter 77

Although the official regime tighened its reins of power, a group of pro-democracy activists was set to oppose it, in the spirit of the 1975 international Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Helsinki. Under the name ‘Charter 77’, an informal citizens’ initiative was launched, criticizing the state apparatus for not respecting human rights and freedoms. At its head stood, among others, a playwright, Václav Havel – a man who was later to stand at the helm of major social changes.

Perestroika

After 1986 it seemed better times were ahead, thanks to Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The glasnost – openness initiative he brought laid the ground for partial political relaxation in the Soviet domain and on the international stage. The Soviet Union no longer dictated its allies’ actions as vehemently as before. To great surprise, Gorbachev also refused to interfere in the internal problems faced by Communist leaders in the Eastern Bloc, and no longer considered military support for these regimes to be an option.

Palach’s Week

When at the beginning of 1989 Czech society diffidently commemorated the 20th anniversary of the self-immolation protest by student Jan Palach, few thought possible the kind of changes that had already started in some other countries. Only a few dozen Czech dissidents had the courage to oppose established power structures and just a few hundred like-minded people came to support them on Wenceslas Square. At the time, the forces of repression were still being deployed to quell any attempts at social, cultural and, ultimately, political transformation.

The Summer of 1989

Prague witnessed quite a heated summer during the holidays and in September of 1989, when at the Embassy of the German Federal Republic in Lesser Town crowds of Eastern Germans (the inhabitants of the then GDR) began to gather, refusing to return home and deciding to take a fundamental step – to live in a free and unfettered world. Hundreds of Trabant cars with East German license plates blocked the Lesser Town streets, and the seat of the West German Embassy, Lobkowicz Palace, was straining at the seams. The protagonists of this unprecedented event finally managed to achieve their aims with the support of Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the Federal foreign minister. Their success was another signal for the Czechs that the old order was collapsing, slowly but surely.

The fall of the Berlin Wall

The international situation in Europe and the (9 November 1989) fall of the hated wall which had divided Berlin, Germany and Europe, brought fresh hope to Czechoslovakia. The most notorious symbol of the Cold War was in ruins, but the Czechs and Slovaks had to wait a while longer with their struggle for freedom.

Saint Agnes of Bohemia

There was another major milestone in 1989. After several centuries of effort and many setbacks, the faithful finally saw the canonization by Pope John Paul II of Agnes of Bohemia, daughter of the Bohemian King Přemysl Otakar I, whereby the Pope emphatically supported the Archbishop of Prague, Cardinal František Tomášek in his programme called ‘The decade of the nation’s spiritual revival’, aimed at Czech (not only Catholic) society. The Canonization of St Agnes of Bohemia on 12 November 1989, opened the door to a free Europe for the Czechs.

Student protest

There was supposed to be just a small student manifestation and a slightly provocative remembrance of events that took place fifty years earlier. In 1939, under the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Czech students had decided to demonstrate in opposition to Nazism. Several were injured by security forces and the medic Jan Opletal lost his life. His funeral then became a focal point for national protest and prompted the closure of Czech universities. That was why on 17 November 1989, a student procession set off from Albertov to remind of the ever-present desire for freedom, for people of all generations and all time.

17th November

The consequences were inevitable. The college-students’ initiative, joined by many Prague residents, did not stop at taking a retrospective view, and did not end at Vyšehrad, as originally planned. The students wanted to express their views on current affairs, probably best characterized by one of them, who said: ‘We don’t just want to reminisce with piety, we have to think of the here-and-now and even more so about the future.’ Yet the students were not looking for confrontation. On the contrary, the flowers the participants bore in their hands symbolized the peaceable nature of the whole event.

Nevertheless, the demonstration, under close surveillance by State Security forces did not remain peaceful. In the narrowest part of Národní street, where the procession was deliberately herded, the Rapid Response Regiment of the ‘Public Safety’ police force was preparing to come down hard on the college students, jointly with other police units. The brutality with which the students were attacked shocked the general public and became the proverbial last drop that made the cup of restraint overflow.

The Velvet Revolution

What ensued was an avalanche, a huge welling-up of the stream of emotions suppressed and concealed over the years. Day after day, thousands of people gathered in Wenceslas Square to express their desire to return to democracy. Every evening after work, people would came to gather under the balcony of the Melantrich building on Wenceslas Square to listen to the topical sentiments of Václav Havel or the recollections of Alexander Dubček, the beautifully sung iconic ‘Prayer to Marta’ by Marta Kubišová or to the singer-songwriter Karel Kryl, who had been banned for years.

The crowds grew, swelled by workers from Prague industrial plants, and a strike was joined by actors who spent time on theatre stages discussing current events with their audiences.

The Civic Forum grouping was established – a civic platform of broad opinion, with one goal – to start up a dialogue with the Communist powers-that-be. Yet those days were full of tension and uncertainty whether there was to be some intervention by the People’s Militia, the security forces, or even the army.

And then it finally snapped. The rejection by the then ‘One Party Government’ brought eight hundred thousand people out on Letná plain on 25 November 1989. This was too much public pressure even for the Communists, who could no longer claim the support of the working class. They capitulated and in the following month gave up many of their positions. Although it was evident that the transformation of society would be long, painful and complicated, the first step had been taken. On 29 December 1989, the dissident Václav Havel was elected President of Czechoslovakia.