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The death of Vaclav Havel stopped Czechs in their tracks on Sunday. A hush fell over the country as thousands of people gathered to light candles and pay a silent tribute to the hero of the Velvet Revolution. At 6 pm bells around the Czech Republic tolled in memory of the man who showed endless courage in the face of oppression and who led his nation on the road to freedom and democracy.

This Thursday marks 22 years since the start of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia that brought down the country’s Communist regime. On November 17, 1989, the communist police cracked down on a student demonstration on Prague’s Národní třída (National street) setting in motion a series of countrywide protests that eventually led to the fall of the totalitarian regime. The 17th of November is also the important anniversary of a student march against the Nazi occupation in 1939, which was brutally suppressed. As a result the Nazis raided university campuses and executing nine students without trial. The protest also served as a pretext for further reprisals against Czech intellectuals. Some 1,200 people were sent to concentration camps and all Czech universities were closed.

Early on Thursday, President Klaus, Prime Minister Nečas, the defence minister and other politicians marked the anniversary with a wreath laid at the Hlavka student residence hall while the Hussite hymn was sung. President Klaus outlined key differences, in his view, between the protests in 1939 and 1989, chief among them – he said – that the Communist system had been ready to fall, while the Nazis in 1939 were at the height of their power. November 17 has also seen other commemorative events in the capital: chief among them has been the lighting of candles and laying of flowers and wreaths at the 1989 memorial at Národní třída. Visiting there a little later on Thursday, Mr Klaus wished Václav Havel – conspicuously absent this year because of continuing health problems – early recovery.

On the eve of the 22nd anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution of 1989 that ended the communist rule in the country, an open-air photo exhibition in Prague’s Náměstí Republiky was opened on Wednesday, exploring links between the fall of communism in Europe and the events of the Arab Spring. The exhibit, entitled Almost Velvet Revolutions, present some 40 images from Czechoslovakia in 1989 and the protests that have shaken the Arab world. The exhibition runs until November 30.

On Tuesday, the public broadcaster Czech TV is airing the first part of a new documentary series dedicated to Originální videojournal, a unique video magazine established by Czech dissidents in the late 1980s. The documentary offers some rare footage from dissident circles, as well as reports about the Velvet Revolution in November 1989.

The European Court of Human Rights has rejected a complaint from former Communist prosecutor Ludmila Brožová-Polednová. The court found that the process, which sent the 89-year-old to six years in prison for the 1950 judicial murder of democratic politician Milada Horáková, was fair. The court said that the European Convention on Human Rights provides no protection for the liquidation of political opponents via judicial execution, and disregarded her argument that she was following the instructions of her superiors in the show-trial, noting that she was an experienced and educated lawyer. Brožová-Polednová was pardoned in December of last year by President Klaus on grounds of her advanced age and medical condition.

Twenty years ago, in January 1991, Czechoslovakia began a crash course in capitalism as the old system of central economic planning that had been in place for the previous four decades was dismantled. In spite of resistance from some quarters, Czechoslovakia, opted for a fast, shock therapy reform, differing from the more cautious path taken in Poland and Hungary.

Czech Senator Jiří Dienstbier, a leading figure of the Czech dissident movement and the country’s first post-communist foreign minister died over the weekend at the age of 73. A former dissident and journalist, Mr. Dienstbier served on many committees and worked as a UN rapporteur on human rights in the former Yugoslavia, but in people’s minds he will always be remembered as the man who stood next to the former West German foreign minister Hans Dietrich Genscher and cut through the barbed wire of the Iron Curtain.

This week in Mailbox: The 21st anniversary of the 1989 Velvet Revolution, a “Czech” week in Denmark, the Czech hard candy Hašlerky. Listeners quoted: Ruth O'Connor, Hans Verner Lollike, Chun-Quan Meng.

A few days ago Radio Prague and the Czech Literature Portal, this country’s foremost website promoting Czech literature abroad, got together to hold the first of a series of public literary discussions. David Vaughan’s guests were two of the Czech Republic’s best known literary figures, the novelist Petra Hůlová and the critic and translator Martin Machovec. They were joined by an international audience at one of Prague’s most atmospheric literary dens, the Shakespeare and Sons bookshop, tucked away in one of the ancient houses in Prague’s Lesser

The English journalist and writer Misha Glenny is perhaps best known for his work covering the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the hit 2008 book McMafia. His first book The Rebirth of History, published in 1990, focused on the post-communist political landscape of Eastern Europe, including Czechoslovakia, a country with which he had a close association. Indeed, Glenny had studied Czech in Prague, and remembers with fondness his time here in the early ‘80s. When we spoke recently at the close of the Forum 2000 conference in the city, he recalled