Related articles

Today’s programme will be dedicated to the Velvet Revolution which brought down the communist regime in November 1989. The events of November and December 1989 had a very distinctive soundscape: the rattling of the keys that thousands of protesters shook above their heads as well as slogans chanted by the crowds. But the soundtrack to the Velvet Revolution is much richer. A number of songs became unofficial anthems of the political change and the heady days of late 1989 are forever connected with music.

David Mrazek, is an award winning American writer and film producer. David, whose grandfather was a Czech American émigré, made an award winning documentary film in 1990 called ‘My Prague Spring’, which documented the lives of some of his Czech relatives in the heady months after the Velvet Revolution. In an interview for Radio Prague he talked about how the documentary was made and what inspired him to document this heady period of Czech modern history.

While thousands of Westerners flocked to Czechoslovakia in the wake of the Velvet Revolution, Don Sparling experienced those dramatic events at first hand. In the second part of a two-part interview, he discusses, among other things, that intoxicating period and the changes that followed.

Among those closest to Václav Havel was Michael Žantovský. The two were among the founders of the opposition Civic Forum in the whirlwind period of the Velvet Revolution, which toppled Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime after four long decades. Soon after Mr. Havel was elected president on December 29 1989, he made Mr. Žantovský his press spokesperson – and part of a team at Prague Castle that had to learn double-quick how to run a country.

A number of Slovak rock bands are playing a concert at Prague’s Rock Café on Saturday night to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the start of the Velvet Revolution and the upcoming 20th anniversary of the split of Czechoslovakia. The groups Polemic, Billy Barman and Živé kvety will perform at the downtown venue, which is located only metres away from the Velvet Revolution memorial on Národní St. A spokesperson for the organisers said the Czech foreign minister, Karel Schwarzenberg would appear, as would the former Slovak prime minister, Iveta Radičová, who now heads the Slovak Institute in Prague.

Events have been held in the Czech Republic to mark the country’s day of the fight for freedom and democracy, which is a state holiday. On Saturday morning the Czech president, Václav Klaus, the prime minister, Petr Nečas, and other senior state officials took part in a ceremony at a Prague hall of residence where there is a memorial to student victims of Nazi persecution in 1939. A march commemorating those students sparked the beginning of the Velvet Revolution on November 17 1989 and people on Saturday also gathered and lit candles at a memorial at the spot where riot police attacked participants on Prague’s Národní St.

Prime Minister Petr Nečas said with regard to Saturday’s events linked to resistance in the past to Nazism and Communism that Czech people had not lost and would not lose their historical memory. He said the fact that freedom and democracy were not taken for granted in the Czech Republic was constantly being confirmed. Mr. Nečas also said that the success of the Communist Party in recent regional and Senate elections represented a certain “memento”, the Czech News Agency reported.

In an address, President Klaus said gatherings such as the one at the student dormitory were held to ensure that people did not forget the past. He said he was concerned that Czechs were now living in what he would characterise as an era of “forgetting and gestures”. Mr. Klaus said he would not describe contemporary society as an information society but rather as an “uninformed society” in which traditional values were being damaged and defiled, adding that gestures and words were being applauded, not actions and principled and consistent behavior. Later, at the memorial on Národní St., the president was met by supporters and opponents; members of the pro-Klaus D.O.S.T. group shouted long live Klaus, while a young man carrying a Czech flag declared that the president was a thief who had robbed and sold off the country.

With the fall of communism, it was not long before foreign investors began taking an interest in Czechoslovakia. This ranged from huge industrial multinationals to young college graduates, who arrived in Prague with backpacks in the early 1990s, and happened to spot a business opportunity. Many burned their fingers; some made a quick buck and disappeared, and others settled down and stayed here for good. In 1991, Radio Prague interviewed a few of these pioneering investors.

For a few weeks just after the fall of communism, Radio Prague went silent. Its days as a tool in the Cold War were over. After huge staff cuts, and with the old communist managers gone, Radio Prague went back on air early in 1990. A new era began for the English Section, and with so many sweeping social and economic changes under way, there was plenty to report about.