Czech Velvets didn’t remain underground
Thirty years ago, the map of Europe was being redrawn.
A wave of change was sweeping through the countries we used to think of as being “behind the Iron Curtain”.
The tide of popular movements overthrowing Communist regimes began that summer in Poland and quickly spread to Hungary, the Baltic states, East Germany and Bulgaria before reaching Czechoslovakia in November.
The Czech Communist Party was an old-school regime and was determined to cling on to power.
But the fall of the Berlin Wall saw the pressure that had been building on them for months reach crisis point as they found themselves increasingly out of step with other Soviet bloc countries and their own people.
Even the Kremlin, led by the reforming President Mikhail Gorbachev, indicated change in Czechoslovakia would be desirable, with the Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda stating the people had “lost faith” in their leaders.
Popular demonstrations in Prague had grown over the course of a week to the point at which 500,000 protesters were on the streets.
Finally, Party General Secretary Milos Jakes called an early-morning emergency meeting of his government after admitting to underestimating the force of the pro-democracy movement.
Bowing to the inevitable, 24 members of the Politburo and the Secretariat – mainly the same hardliners who’d called in Soviet tanks to crush the Prague Spring reformers in 1968 – stood down.
And the hero of 1968, Alexander Dubcek, returned from exile to a triumphant welcome in the city.
He told a jubilant quarter-of-a-million-strong crowd in Wenceslas Square: “My idea of socialism with a human face is living with a new generation.”
He told the masses the new Civic Reform, a broad coalition of opposition groups, represented “all the people”.
And the new Federal Assembly abolished the Communists’ constitutional hold on power, and the physical manifestations of the Iron Curtain – barbed wire and other obstructions along the borders with West Germany and Austria – were dismantled.
The following month Dubcek was elected chairman of the new administration and dissident Vaclav Havel became president, completing what had become known as the “Velvet Revolution”.
And the following year, the country was separated into the Czech and Slovak Republics and free elections were held for the first time since 1946.
The “Velvet Divorce” was completed in 1993 when Czechoslovakia ceased to exist and became two independent states – the Czech Republic and Slovakia.