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Over the next four weeks, at almost 600 primary and secondary schools throughout the Czech Republic, pupils will come face to face with the many injustices carried out during four decades of communist rule. Using documentary films and interaction with real people who lived through those times, the Stories of Injustice project attempts to shed light on a period that barely features on the mainstream Czech curriculum. The programme is run by the NGO People in Need, and this is its fourth year, but as Rob Cameron reports, it's not to everyone's

Exactly 90 years have passed since the founding of Czechoslovakia on October 28 1918, a date that is still celebrated as a national holiday in the Czech Republic. In this programme we look at the legacy of Czechoslovakia’s “First Republic”. It survived for just 20 years, brought to an abrupt end with the Munich Agreement of September 1938, followed six months later by the German occupation of what remained of the Czech Lands. During the 40 years of communist rule, the pre-war republic and its founding father, President Tomáš Masaryk, were virtually

Regional and Senate elections took place in the Czech Republic over the weekend in which the opposition Social Democrats defeated the parties of the governing coalition. The strongest opposition party scored a comprehensive victory, winning in all of the 13 regions of the Czech Republic. Social Democrat candidates also made it to the second round in all but one of the 27 electoral districts for the Senate where the poll was held. The relatively high turnout – just over 40 percent – suggests that Czech voters took these elections more seriously

A brass band opens the Gratias Agit award ceremony in Prague's Černínský palác on Friday. The ceremony itself, and the party that follows, are in the words of Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg the single biggest event staged by the Czech Foreign Ministry each year. On Friday, the awards were given to a handful of exceptional individuals from around the world, a few of whom we'll be talking to later. But first, here's organiser Zuzana Opletalová explaining what the awards are about:

The Jan Hus Presbyterian Church and Neighborhood House is to be found on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It takes its name from the great Czech religious reformer Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake in 1415 and influenced the later Protestant movement. When the church was established in the 1870s, it was one of the hubs of a large Czech community that in those days totalled thirty or forty thousand people.

This August 21st marks 40 years since the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops, an invasion meticulously planned by the Soviet Union to crush the period of economic and political reforms known as the Prague Spring. Within hours of late August 20th and early August 21st some 2,000 tanks as well as an estimated 200,000 troops had poured in. It was the beginning of the occupation which changed the course of Czechoslovak history.

When Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in the night from August 20-21 1968, the Czechoslovak Radio building was one of the first places that they tried to bring under control. In the process the building was damaged, several people were killed and dozens injured. Broadcasts went on in secret for several days, keeping the world informed of what was really happening, initially from within the building itself, and then from other locations in the city, using mobile studios and transmitters.

The Czech film director Vojtěch Jasný is a fit and active 82-year-old who clearly loves to tell a story. And what stories. After his father was killed at Auschwitz, the teenage Vojtěch joined the resistance and, he says, became a British spy. As a young filmmaker he was happy to serve socialism and, despite becoming somewhat disillusioned, enjoyed good relations with Communist leaders Antonín Novotný and Alexander Dubček. Other significant acquaintances included Tito, the great German author Heinrich Boll and Miloš Forman.

Peter Sís was born in Brno in 1949 but has been living in the US for over a quarter of a century. He won a Golden Bear for best animated film at the West Berlin Film Festival in 1980, before later launching an extremely successful career as a children’s author and illustrator. Indeed, he is a seven-time winner of the New York Times Book Review award for best illustrated work of the year. His most recent book is The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain. We spoke at his studio in Soho in New York.

One of the earliest recordings from the Czech Radio archives features the voice of Czechoslovakia’s first President, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, talking to a group of Czech children on the occasion of the tenth birthday of Czechoslovakia in October 1928. The president reminds the children of the principle of “a healthy mind in a healthy body”. “Don’t be afraid of water,” he says. “Wash yourselves with gusto, bathe and swim, take exercise in the fresh air and let the sun’s rays warm you.”