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The Czech Chamber of Deputies has recently been embroiled in a controversy over one deputy calling another a “communist fízl”, a scornful term for policemen and their informers. The heated debate over whether the MP should apologize has produced no conclusion. However, it does illustrate the difficulties of addressing the nation’s communist past.

Writers were at the forefront of the Velvet Revolution. But when the dust settled on the political changes they found a fast changing publishing revolution underway that left some of them sidelined. We look at the changes in the publishing and literary world over the last two decades.

The German embassy in Prague is marking the 25th anniversary of the East German exodus. In the summer of 1989, several thousand citizens of communist East Germany sought refuge at the West German embassy in Prague in a prelude to the fall of the Berlin Wall. To commemorate these historic events, the embassy on Thursday opened its doors to the public.

The German embassy in Prague will open its doors to schoolchildren and other visitors on Thursday to mark 25 years since communism in Europe began to collapse. The embassy will recall what grew into a flood of East German refugees in 1989 travelling to Prague and climbing over the then-West German embassy walls to escape totalitarianism. By September, thousands had done so, camping on the embassy grounds, before they were allowed to seek refuge in West Germany. The embassy will be open to the public on Thursday afternoon and will see discussions with former East Germans who fled, former officials who helped them, and others including author Jaroslav Rudiš and artist David Černý.

Czech President Miloš Zeman is just one of a number of foreign leaders who have gathered in Warsaw on Wednesday to mark the 25th anniversary of Poland’s first partially free elections, a milestone on the road to democracy in the then Eastern Bloc. But what did that historic vote mean for the opposition in Czechoslovakia at the time? That’s a question I put to journalist and former dissident Jan Macháček.

The Czech president, Miloš Zeman, is to join his counterparts from Germany, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary at ceremonies in all five countries later this year marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of communism in the states. Mr. Zeman’s foreign affairs spokesman confirmed his participation to the Czech News Agency. While the events in the Visegrad Four countries will take place in their capitals, the German memorial will take place in Leipzig, a city that saw mass demonstrations against the then East German regime in 1989. The Czech Republic will mark the 25th anniversary on November 17, the day that the Velvet Revolution got underway. Details about the event have not been revealed.

A third of Czechs believe that the change of political system in 1989 did not “pay off”, suggests the results of a survey conducted by the CVVM agency quoted by the news website iDnes.cz. Sixty-three percent of respondents agreed with the statement that the replacement of the Communist government had “paid off”. Thirty-four percent of those surveyed said the changes had brought about more benefits than losses; a quarter of respondents expressed the opposite view. Over 1,000 people were questioned for the opinion poll last month.

Most people date the beginning of the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia to November 17th, 1989, when a peaceful student demonstration was brutally broken up by riot police. But cracks in the regime's grip on power began to appear much earlier in that year, when people gathered to mark the 20th anniversary of Jan Palach's self-immolation in January 1969. For seven days starting January 15th, 1989, demonstrators who tried to gather on Wenceslas Square were beaten and sprayed with water cannon. Among them was Ivana Varju, who was a student at Charles

Czechs mark the Day of Struggle for Freedom and Democracy on Sunday, a public holiday. In Prague’s Národní třída, top Czech officials, lawmakers, freedom fighters and other public figures are to pay tribute to students who triggered the Velvet Revolution of 1989, eventually toppling the communist regime. Another event, held at a student dorm in the centre of the capital, commemorate the Nazi oppression of Czech university students in 1939. Speaking at the student halls, Prime Minister Jiří Rusnok told the gathering the legacy of November 17 must be passed on to younger generations.

In related news, the National Museum is ion Sunday holding a collection of memorabilia from the Velvet Revolution of 1989. The museum is asking members of the public to donate photographs, video footage, sound recordings, etc. in the museum’s building on top of Prague’s Wenceslas Square. The museum also wants to record people’s personal memories from that time. Selected items will be featured at next year’s exhibition marking 25 years since the fall of communism in the country.