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As the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution draws near, we take you to places that are closely associated with the events that led to the collapse of the Communist regime 30 years ago. In the third episode of our mini-series, we visit Wenceslas Square and Letná plain, the scene of spontaneous demonstrations, which followed the brutal police crackdown on an unarmed student demonstration on November 17, 1989.

In a remarkable work of oral history, four students with the help of former dissident and award winning author Aleš Palán have produced a 270 page history of the events that took place in Prague on November 17, 1989. One of them is Alžběta Ambrožová, a 26 year old graduate of English and American Studies. She says that around 300 testimonies were collected through a mix of interviews and online questionnaires. I began by asking her about how people felt going into that watershed event in Czech history.

As the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution draws near, we take you to places that played a significant role in the events leading to the collapse of the Communist regime 30 years ago. In the second episode of our mini-series, we visit the former Laterna Magika theatre in central Prague, which served as the headquarters of the Civic Forum.

Czech Radio marked the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution on Monday with an international conference on the fall of communism in Central Europe and the transformation processes that followed. Aside from leading experts in the fields of economics, political sciences and journalism, the speakers’ list also featured the names of prominent former dissidents and politicians such as Lech Wałęsa, Magdaléna Vášáryová and Václav Klaus.

One of the many undertakings commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution and the return of democracy to this country is a collection of interviews, quotes and photographs compiled by the award-winning Czech documentarist Barbora Baronová in cooperation with the Czech Centers.

November 11 is the 80th anniversary of the death of Jan Opletal, a Prague student who had been gunned down at an anti-Nazi demonstration in the city a fortnight earlier. Opletal became a symbol of Czech resistance to the German occupation and a march held in his honour helped spark the Velvet Revolution five decades after his death.

Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution was sparked by a student demonstration on November 17, 1989 that was brutally quelled by riot police. Among those on the front line of those clashes was writer Magdaléna Platzová. The daughter of dissident Eda Kriseová, at 17 years old she had already taken part in a number of demonstrations. But, she says, nothing prepared her for the violence that surrounded her on Prague’s Národní St. on that now famous day.

As the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution draws near, we take you to places that played a significant role in the events leading to the collapse of the Communist regime 30 years ago. In the first episode of our mini-series, we visit Národní třída, the scene of a brutal police crackdown on an unarmed student demonstration on November 17. It was this event that marked the beginning of the revolution.

Ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, an eclectic group of musicians based in the United States has recorded a special album of songs written by Czech songwriters Karel Kryl and Jaromír Nohavica. Called ‘Steel Strings and Iron Curtains – Songs that Ignited the Downfall of Communism’, it features a number of subversive tunes never before recorded in English.

This November Czechs will be marking 30 years since the Velvet Revolution ended totalitarian rule and re-established democracy. However, according to a newly published survey, attitudes towards the change in the system vary significantly among the public, with many of the lesser educated harbouring nostalgia for the old regime.