Related articles

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

Historians at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes have announced they recently uncovered previously unknown video footage in the archives on the events of 1989. Footage shot – and heavily manipulated - by the former regime’s secret police, the StB. Carefully presented images and a propagandistic voice-over in the “documentary” were meant to give a diametrically different picture of public demonstrations which shook the country 21 years ago, suggesting they were a provocation and a sham. Swiftly overcome by events, though, the Communists

With just days remaining until the World Cup kicks off in South Africa, football fever is beginning to grip fans around the globe. The Czech Republic failed to qualify this year, but many will have fond memories of the 1990 World Cup in Italy, when supporters from Czechoslovakia were finally able to travel freely to a major soccer tournament.

Generation 89, currently underway in four European capitals, is a project intended to bring together young people from different backgrounds and different experiences to debate their common future in the European Union. Participants from nine EU member states are meeting in Bucharest, Brussels, Prague and Warsaw to talk about where they came from and where they want to go. The project was initiated by the Romanian Cultural Institute to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and co-financed by the European Commission.

A candidate standing for parliamentary elections for the Social Democratic Party in Liberec has withdrawn his name from the ballot after it was discovered that he was a member of the communist police force that attacked student demonstrators on November 17, 1989. The regional head of the Social Democrats told the news website iDnes that Radek Polma had withdrawn his candidacy on Friday to avoid influencing the election. Archives show Mr Polma as having been a constable in the cordon which rammed and then attempted to disperse the protestors. Mr Polma, who was then 19 years old, says that he had been stationed away from the clashes, in which numerous students were beaten and injured. The Social Democratic Party confirmed last month that he would be removed from the ballot if their candidate was found to have violently opposed the demonstration.