Thirty years after the Velvet Revolution, its legacy still remains divisive in Prague
As celebrations occur across Europe to celebrate the fall of communism, at least 20 per cent of older Czechs want a return to the left-wing ideology. Mick O’Hare looks at why things remain so complicated
Leonid Brezhnev screwed me over twice,” bemoans Pavel Kamenicky. In 1968 Alexander Dubcek was attempting to reform communism in Czechoslovakia in what had become known as the Prague Spring. But Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union and he of the eponymous interventionist doctrine, decreed that it was necessary for his troops to intrude and “counteract forces hostile to socialism”. Kamenicky was a student in Prague at the time, sympathetic to Dubcek’s aims. Two decades later, Kamenicky, by this time 41, was among cheering crowds in Prague’s Wenceslas Square, celebrating the repudiation of that same Brezhnev Doctrine as the people of eastern Europe won freedom from Soviet-imposed communism. But unlike most of those around him 30 years ago this week, Kamenicky had his doubts.
“Back in ’68 I supported Dubcek. And we didn’t want to overthrow communism, we all believed in it,” he says. “We just wanted to reform it. Liberalise it. But that was too much for Brezhnev. He sent in the tanks.”
Twenty years later, in 1989, Kamenicky was equally dubious. Revolutions had swept eastern Europe as communism was overthrown, and current Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had made it clear the Brezhnev Doctrine was no more. His troops would not violate the huge political upheavals happening throughout the former satellite states of the USSR.
“This time we overthrew communism without knowing what would take its place,” Kamenicky laments. “I still believed in a socialist society, I still do, but in 1989 it was being dismantled before my eyes and all that was replacing it was disarray. And for sure I’m not certain that what we have now is anything better than we had before, certainly not better than what Dubcek was proposing.”
It’s a view many people Kamenicky’s age share, 30 years after their nation’s liberation from the dominance of the Soviet Union. Younger people, however, tend to view things differently. “We are a modern country now,” says 30-year-old Johana Peckova from Brno who was born the year of the revolution. “I hear the stories my grandparents tell and I would not want to live like that.”
The revolutions of 1989 had been mostly peaceful as a wave of change spread throughout eastern Europe, but the one that ditched the last vestiges of communism in what then was Czechoslovakia was the most peaceful of all, known now as the Velvet Revolution or, in the Slovak language, sometimes the Gentle Revolution.
Throughout that year it seemed like all the excitement was elsewhere. Poland had Lech Walesa and trade union Solidarity running rings around General Wojciech Jaruzelski’s government, urged on by John Paul II, the first Polish pope in the Vatican. Erich Honecker was trying to close his borders to stop East Germans fleeing through Hungary, and the great symbolism of the fall of the Berlin Wall was transfixing the world. Meanwhile, in the only violent overthrow of an eastern European regime, Romania would soon witness the summary trial and execution of its hardline leader Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena.
Meanwhile Czechoslovakia, a nation bolted together from the rubble of the First World War – and the nation that British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and his French counterpart Edouard Daladier found expedient to chuck under the wheels of a Skoda bus via the Munich Agreement, in a useless attempt to appease Adolf Hitler in 1938 – went somewhat under the radar as revolution spread throughout eastern Europe. But historians will note that this was a nation always prepared to fight its corner. Witness its opposition to the Soviet invasion of 1968 – 137 died – and its resistance to the Germans throughout the Second World War: Czech and Slovak partisans murdered the architect of the Holocaust, SS Officer Reinhard Heydrich, in Prague in 1942; while the Slovak National Uprising of 1944 was a doomed attempt to overthrow the Nazi regime in the eastern part of the country.
But on 17 November 1989 students, gathering legally in Prague to commemorate the death of Jan Opletal, a student killed by the wartime Nazi occupiers, began calling for democratic reforms from the government, spurred on by news of anti-government protests elsewhere in eastern Europe. Police intervened to stop the march and although the students offered no resistance, beatings began. Rumours spread that a student had been killed, and although these were unfounded, the mood in Prague and throughout the nation changed… very quickly.
The following day students and theatre workers went on strike and demanded further action, this time for all workers, on 27 November. They were becoming emboldened; they had the support of contemporaries in other eastern European nations and knew that the Soviet Union was not interested in a repeat of 1968, and would not intervene. Again false rumours spread that the police had killed another demonstrator.
The day after, 19 November, dissident playwright and political activist Vaclav Havel and his outlawed Charter 77 movement, which had long been critical of the Czechoslovak government (leading to the arrest of Havel and other members on numerous occasions), established the Civic Forum. CF demanded an end to police violence and for governmental reforms including the resignations of its leaders. It also demanded the release of all political prisoners held by the communist government. In the Slovak half of the country, Public Against Violence began to play a similar role. Playwright Havel was suddenly thrust into his own leading role. Over the course of the next week his name would become known throughout the world.
But the government seemingly had learned nothing from the experiences of fellow communist regimes across eastern Europe. They stood firm, prime minister Ladislav Adamec making no concessions except to insist violence would not be used against protestors. It has since been suggested that the government and the Communist Party under general secretary Milos Jakes knew change was coming but simply had no idea how to react or resist. On the other hand, Jakes made a speech on national television telling the nation that socialism was still the only option, while summoning reservist militias to Prague. Whatever the truth, dissent was growing and demonstrations took place in other cities outside Prague, notably Bratislava, Brno and Ostrava.
Jakes, who had seemed the most likely of the party hierarchy to consider a forceful response, was suddenly replaced by the more moderate Karel Urbanek, but it made little difference. By now protestors had outgrown Wenceslas Square and on 25 and 26 November three-quarters of a million people demonstrated in Prague’s Letna Park, as cardinal Frantisek Tomasek, leader of the Catholic church in Czechoslovakia, gave them his backing.
After almost two weeks of protest state television had begun to broadcast censored reports of the mounting dissent, and some newspapers began contradicting government pronouncements. This galvanised support for the 27 November general strike because, for the first time, many people outside the cities began to get wind of what was afoot.
Student Oto Obecny had been at the park protests, but he very nearly wasn’t. “Wanna know something?” he asks. “We knew there were going to be demonstrations but me and a few friends really just wanted a night out, and we were sitting in U Fleku on the evening of 25 November.” U Fleku is an ancient Prague brewpub centred around a courtyard, which has held the affections of the city’s beer drinkers since 1499. It’s often been suggested, only partially in jest, that it was only Czechoslovakia’s great beer that kept the population sane during the dismal years of one-party rule. Obecny goes on: “Then somebody came in and said the Berlin Wall had come down a week ago – can you believe we hadn’t heard? – and we should get to Letna.”
Fellow student Karena Novakova, now a government translator aged 49, was more proactive. “I think I’d waited for that moment all my life,” she says. “But it was frightening. We were so conditioned to be wary, not to be politically active, to keep one’s opinions to oneself, even in one’s own family. You couldn’t even talk about 1968 in public, it was an unmentionable subject. Our neighbour was constantly being harassed by the STB, the state security police, because he insisted once a year on hanging the old flag of the Austro-Hungarian empire from his window. I guess he was brave but my mum said he was stupid. Now here I was, running through packed streets as the police watched, feeling that every evening they would come round my home and arrest me or my dad.”
It didn’t matter that the economy was broken, you just pretended it was OK because the government said it was OK. But all of a sudden here was a chance to change something
The strike the following day had an enormous effect. It was reckoned to have been observed by 75 per cent of the working population, including Communist Party members. “I just thought, what the hell,” says factory worker and trade union organiser Karel Holec, now 75. “We knew nothing of the world outside, but we did know you had to toe the line at home. Work hard, join the party, do your national service and then there would be bread on the table. But the thought of any kind of joy or fulfilment of any hopes; forget it. It didn’t matter that the economy was broken, you just pretended it was OK because the government said it was OK. But all of a sudden here was a chance to change something.” And as if to confirm the kind of power found in mass popular political movements that so scared the communist regimes that year, he adds: “So I went on strike, although whether I’d have been brave enough to do it if everybody else hadn’t, I’m not so sure.”
Adamec was forced to meet Havel, who presented CF’s demands which included deleting the article stating that Czechoslovakia should be a one-party communist state. On 28 November the Communist Party announced it would relinquish power – 41 years of hegemony were over. Resignations followed.
President Gustav Husak hung on until 10 December when a new government took control, then he followed the rest of the party leadership into ignominious retirement.
Barely two weeks had passed from the first student protest to the fall of the Communist Party. Professor of European studies Timothy Garton Ash has commented: “In Poland the transition took 10 years, in East Germany 10 months, in Czechoslovakia 10 days.” By the end of December Havel was president and, symbolically, Alexander Dubcek, the reforming leader who – it might be argued – had kicked off Czechoslovakia’s tradition of dissent back in 1968, was made speaker of the parliament. The first free elections since 1946 were held the following year.
Despite the huge political transition, not a single life had been lost. It was indeed a gentle revolution. Was it inevitable considering the uprisings taking place elsewhere east of the Iron Curtain? Probably yes, but it still took committed and brave individuals to instigate. That they did so without resorting to violence was testament to the dissident leadership, especially Havel.
Thirty years later, Czechoslovakia no longer exists. The transition to a market economy was always likely to be difficult following decades of state-controlled economics, hence Pavel Kamenicky asking if the rapid onset of capitalism can indeed be said to have improved the lives of the general population. It did not go unnoticed in Prague that the balcony of the Melantrich publishing company, from which Havel delivered stirring speeches to the people, became a branch of a stalwart British corporation best known for dispensing sensible underwear. But perhaps more significantly, the loss of the centralised controlling presidium allowed tensions between Czechs and Slovaks, two similar but different ethnic groups with similar but different languages, to surface. There had always been resentment from Slovaks in the poorer east towards the Czechs who were seen as more sophisticated and urbane, and towards the capital Prague which was in the western, Czech half of the nation. And the end of communism, leading to inflation, loss of state healthcare, and rising unemployment – especially in Slovakia – where previously there had been none, only increased Slovak discontent. On 1 January 1993 the Czech Republic and Slovakia went their separate ways – two discrete nations once more.
Of course, that wasn’t the only legacy of the Velvet Revolution. The Czech Republic and Slovakia both now have right-wing governments led respectively by Andrej Babis and Peter Pellegrini. They are not the obvious political children of the liberal Havel; indeed, many politicians of their ilk hold him in disdain. And both nations are members of the Visegrad group alongside populist Hungarian demagogue Viktor Orban and Polish conservative Mateusz Morawiecki.
Whether the 1989 protestors had clear outcomes in mind is questionable. Many were democrats, a few maybe had materialistic motives, but most quite likely just wanted to live lives unencumbered by the state
The group is strident in its opposition to immigration and, in the main, refuses sanctuary for refugees. Minorities in the Czech Republic and Slovakia have found life increasingly onerous under their regimes. Havel himself warned of the rise of intolerance in a speech in 1997 – now often referred to as his “ugly mood” speech – in which he decried the mindset towards which his nation was shifting.
How many people protesting in Letna Park would have predicted, or more importantly, wanted, the political situation in their country today? “In many ways we only knew what we disliked,” says Karena Novakova. “What was coming down the line, we had no idea.” Whether the 1989 protestors had clear outcomes in mind is questionable. Many were democrats, a few maybe had materialistic motives, but most quite likely just wanted to live lives unencumbered by the state.
On the other hand Novakova is generally approving of the other longer-term effects of the revolution: the admission of the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the EU, and – to a lesser extent – joining the western military alliance of Nato after Czechoslovakia and other eastern European nations ceded from the Soviet-aligned Warsaw Pact alliance.
Havel was instrumental in the Czech Republic joining Nato in 1999 (Slovakia joined in 2004) but as Nato’s membership pushed eastwards, coinciding and colliding with the increasingly nationalistic and aggressive militarism of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, this has ratcheted up tensions in the region as Putin increasingly feels surrounded. Other stances taken by Havel as president, such as his opposition to Slovak independence and criticism of the Czechoslovaks’ behaviour towards the country’s German minority after the Second World War proved controversial. In many ways when he died in 2011 he was more popular abroad than at home.
Havel’s legacy is now somewhat usurped by the policies of the current governments of the two nations – it is almost certain he would not have approved of their 21st-century populist agendas. Former Czech Republic defence minister Alexandr Vondra told Politicot: “We were all idealistic back then ... if you are looking for signs of Havel’s moral legacy in the country right now, I would say it’s a difficult task. He raised the ethical bar too high for the average citizen. But, then, if you start with a lower bar, you will get lower results.”
We spoke of it as revolution right from the beginning. It felt that way when you were standing in the streets facing down the riot police
On the other hand, he believes the changes Havel brought about cannot be so easily undone. “I’m critical of Babis, but [he] cannot destroy the democracy Havel helped create.”
It has been argued by some historians that because the revolution involved no violence, it wasn’t actually a revolution at all. They would argue that legitimate protest by ordinary citizens changed opinion rather than the kind of political violence and destructive subterfuge that fomented, say, the French or Russian revolutions. Nonetheless, the Czechoslovak protestors engendered political change and a transfer of power from a ruling autocracy.
In Czech “velvet revolution” translates as sametova revoluce and the name itself was coined by a Czech-English translator, Rita Klimova, who would eventually become Czech ambassador to the United States. It’s a matter of semantics whether she intended to ascribe the events in her nation as akin to those in France in 1789 or Russia in 1917 – but to those living through late 1989 in Prague and elsewhere, the atmosphere certainly felt like one of revolt. “We spoke of it as revolution right from the beginning,” says Novakova. “It felt that way when you were standing in the streets facing down the riot police.”
And is there one more potential link from the Velvet Revolution to a politically cataclysmic event this century? Did the westward migration of many young people from the former Czechoslovakia (along with their other eastern European counterparts) to find work in richer western European Union nations contribute, at least in part, to the vote for Brexit in Britain’s 2016 referendum? It’s at least possible, although none of the 1989 protestors, nor those watching from the UK, could have foreseen or predicted it.
Doubtless the spin-offs from 1989 will continue to divide the likes of Kamenicky and Novakova. Surveys by the Public Opinion Research Centre suggest almost 20 per cent of Czechs, mainly in older age groups, would like to a see a return to the certainties of communism. Of those who lived before 1989, 40 per cent think they were better off before the Velvet Revolution. The communist parties of the Czech Republic still pick up a number of votes in elections today. The desire for change in 1989, it seems, was more of a cry for autonomy as it was for a demand for free market economics. Kamenicky agrees. “In 1989 people were not demanding material wealth or even western democracy,” he argues. “They simply wanted a say in how their nations were run. That was true of 1968 too.”
And Kamenicky was to be disappointed for a third time following the division of the nation of his birth into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Ironically, it would become known as the Velvet Divorce. “I think it was big a mistake,” says Kamenicky, himself – like Dubcek – a Slovak despite living most of his life in Prague. “But most Slovaks saw their future a separate nation. I’m a socialist and an internationalist and I believe we all work better together. But I’m 71, so what do I know? I guess there is no pleasing a grumpy old man,” he adds with a slightly melancholy smile.
The day the Velvet Revolution began is celebrated as a holiday in the Czech Republic. Does Kamenicky mark the occasion? The look on his face probably provides the answer.
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