I. Introduction
In 1978, Václav Havel wrote a samizdat essay titled "The Power of the Powerless."
In it, a grocer was ordered to post a sign in his shop window -
"Workers of the World, Unite!" He
did what he was told, because refusal to do so could cost him his vacation or
prevent his children from attending university.
Havel wrote that such people would have to take down the official
propaganda and "live in truth" to overthrow communism.
He argued that totalitarians were not invincible – that they could be
exposed, like the emperor with no clothes, once their timid citizens learned to
say "no."
In November and December 1989, Czechoslovakia's citizens said:
"No."
Havel had been a dissident playwright persecuted by the hardline regime,
but became the leader of a rapidly
formed opposition group and political movement called Civic Forum (Občanské
Forum - OF). On 10 December
1989, International Human Rights Day, Havel addressed a crowd of 200,000 on
Wenceslas Square in Prague to confirm the cabinet of a recently named coalition
government. It was here that he
dubbed the peaceful revolution that swept the hardliners from power the Velvet
Revolution (Sametová Revoluce).
Havel had set the tone for the revolution by urging his followers to
avoid violence, to remain polite in victory, and to renounce vengeance.
The Civic Forum, with its Slovak companion group Public Against Violence,
announced an end to a general strike scheduled for 11 December. Instead, church bells, horns, alarms, and sirens would sound
nationwide to show support for the victorious opposition, which in the space of
a few short weeks had swept to power over the government that had so recently
persecuted them for their beliefs.
What were the reasons for the incredible, fairy-tale success of the
opposition? How did a hurriedly
assembled coalition of dissidents, students, and intellectuals manage, in just
21 days, to break the hold of the communists - and without bloodshed?
How did the OF, an organization unheard of prior to the demonstrations of
November 1989, so quickly and effectively yield power against a hardline
government deeply entrenched after 22 years of unopposed rule?
How could a loose coalition of a dozen or so illegal dissident groups,
hurriedly formed in a Prague theater on 19 November, force concessions from
the communists in a mere nine days, then go on to become the majority party in a
new government in just three weeks?
Who could have predicted that a dissident playwright imprisoned
repeatedly
for his beliefs would find himself thrust into the presidency?
That he would entertain rock and jazz musicians such as Frank Zappa and
Paul Simon in Hradčany, the centuries-old castle that was the seat of
Czechoslovakia's government?
Why did the Velvet Revolution succeed?
Certainly, the examples of Hungary, East Germany, Poland, and Tiananmen
Square in China played a part.
As scores of German refugees used recently relaxed travel restrictions to
flee to the West through Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the Czechoslovaks could
watch the hopeful émigrés as they risked all for freedom. As hundreds of thousands of East Germans used the West
German Embassy in Prague as a springboard to freedom in the West, they gave
Czechoslovak citizens the hope that they could throw off the yoke of
Marxist-Leninism and regain their place in Europe.
Czechoslovaks knew that Hungary and Poland were both well down the road
to reform, and that their leaders were stubbornly dragging their feet. They knew, too, that the Soviet Union could not afford to
intervene like in 1968.
Czechoslovaks could follow Western media accounts originating from
Austria or West Germany. The
hard-line conservatives in Prague could not risk a massive crackdown on the
scale of China's "solution." If
the Western media could so explicitly display the peaceful nature of the
protesters and the brutal violence of the authorities from within China, there
could be no doubt to its effectiveness within Europe.
The dedication and organization of the Civic Forum must also be credited.
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistická
Strana Československa - KSČ) contributed to Civic Forum's success in no
small part through its lethargy, arrogance, and the clumsy manner in which it
dealt with its opposition. The lack
of violence by the protesters, due to responsible and level-headed leadership,
the participation and support of the clergy, and the inevitability of success
as demonstrated in Hungary and Germany, prevented a violent authoritarian
backlash. Czechoslovakia's long
history of democracy and Western ties, along with its attempt at “Socialism
with a Human Face" in 1968, and a standard of living high by East Bloc
standards, also contributed.
The people of Czechoslovakia, many old enough to remember democracy and
the more recent attempts to reform socialism, appeared to have given up their
dreams and submitted meekly to the deprivations of one of the most hard-line
communist parties in the Warsaw Pact. What
awoke them from the long winter that followed the crushed reforms of the 1968
Prague Spring?
As the events of the Velvet Revolution unfolded, it was as if the people,
after long years of back-breaking drudgery, guarded feelings, and duplicity, had
attained an inevitable watershed. What
followed was a societal catharsis of forty-two long years of fitful sleep,
plagued with dreams of what should have been.
Another important factor was the support the opposition received from the
West. Some of this support came as
economic and materiel assistance from a large expatriate population, many of
whom maintained contact with relatives and friends within Czechoslovakia.
This support ranged from publishing dissident literature to a supply of
Western goods, such as computers, to opposition groups like Charter 77.
Other support came in the form of the information explosion and the
influence of Western media, especially during the last months of 1989.
Many had said that communism could not survive the information age, since
the most important tool of a totalitarian government is its control of information
and the media. In the past, the
government had fairly easily controlled ineditní
literature, which was the underground publication, most often by hand or other
crude means, of illegal or banned works passed from hand to hand. Ineditní
literature would later be printed in countries such as Austria and Germany, or
even within Czechoslovakia through the use of computers.
With radio, television, videotape, and computers finally becoming common
in the East Bloc, the party line found itself facing competition with which it
had never been equipped to cope.
As we examine the events of the Velvet Revolution, its underlying causes,
and its future ramifications, we must also examine the historical and societal
factors that led to its success. We will
then better understand why Czechoslovakia, which had
been considered the last bastion of hardline communism, fell quickly and
bloodlessly to a public outcry for freedom, while other countries, such as
Romania and Yugoslavia, and even the Soviet Union, experienced so much turmoil
and violence.
In 1989, the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic (Česká
a Slovenská Federativní Republika - ČSFR) was a small country with
approximately 15 million residents. Czechoslovakia
was part of what was often referred to as Eastern Europe – meaning the
non-Soviet Warsaw Pact countries - but this is geographically incorrect,
since Europe extends from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains.
Czechoslovakia lies in the heart of Central Europe.
It possesses easily defensible borders of mountainous terrain with (then
East) Germany and Poland to the north, the Soviet Union to the east, Hungary and
Austria to the south, and (then West) Germany to the west.
At 49,370 square miles, its area was roughly equivalent to the state of
Oregon. It was broken down into two
member states, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic, though the Slovak
Republic later went its own way. There
were three major regions: Bohemia,
Moravia, and Slovakia. The Czech
Republic is made up of the two western regions, Bohemia and Moravia, with
Slovakia forming the Slovak Republic.
About 60 percent (9 million) of the people were Czechs and 33 percent (5
million) were Slovaks. The
remainder were mainly Hungarians, Poles, and Germans.
The Hungarian minority was the largest, at about 700,000. After World War II, some 2.5 million Germans living in
Czechoslovakia, mostly in the Sudetenland, were relocated to Germany.
The main languages are Czech and Slovak, similar languages of Slavic
origin, with German and Hungarian spoken by parts of the population.
The diversity of these ethnic groups, the historical conflicts among
them, and the resulting, often intense, nationalism have historically
contributed to Czechoslovakia's problems domestically and internationally.
Government was split between the federal government, responsible for such
aspects as foreign policy and taxation, and regional governments.
Each state had its own Premier, who acted as a Deputy Premier in the
federal government, and national council, and was represented in the federal
government in a fashion that had attempted, but often failed, to insure balance
between the two states. The posts
of President and Premier were traditionally given one to a Czech and the other
to a Slovak, while the Federal Assembly, the Czechoslovak parliament,
maintained the same balance. Its
two houses were also balanced between Czechs and Slovaks - the House of the
People was made up of 100 Czechs and 100 Slovaks, and the House of Nations of 75
Czechs and 75 Slovaks.
The first Czechoslovak republic was formed on 28 October 1918 as a
parliamentary democracy after the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved following
World War I. During the war, Czech
leader Tomas Garrigue Masaryk had negotiated with the Allies for the postwar
creation of a national state of Czechs and Slovaks.
The Bohemian kingdom, which included Moravia, which had been part of the
Austrian half of the Austro-Hungarian empire since 1526, was joined with
Slovakia, formerly Hungarian territory. Masaryk's
victory provided a temporary end to the Czechs' and Slovaks' centuries-old
struggle for political freedom. The
young republic was divided during World War II, with Bohemia and Moravia a
protectorate of the Third Reich and Slovakia an "autonomous" puppet
state. The second republic formed
shortly after World War II, just before the Communist Party seized power in
1948. In 1960, the title
"Czechoslovak Socialist Republic" (Československá Socialistická Republika - ČSSR) was assumed.
The first movement of Czech national glory was a religious reform
movement – the fifteenth century Hussite movement.
The Bohemian Kingdom, which was created as a Czech political unit in the
tenth century, was a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, subject to the authority of
the emperor and his spiritual support, the Roman Catholic Church.
Jan Hus (John Huss), a Czech reformist preacher, challenged papal
authority in 1403, which caused a widespread anti-German rebellion.
From the Hussite religious reform movement a struggle for national
autonomy developed in political and ecclesiastical affairs.
The result was religious warfare that continued until the Czech defeat at
the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620. Following
that defeat, the Austrian Habsburgs effectively imposed autocratic rule.
Habsburg rule ended with World War I, and the first Czechoslovak Republic
survived until the eve of World War II. Problems
with the Sudeten German minority led eventually to its dissolution.
The Sudetenland was a highly industrialized border territory, populated
by Germans, which encompassed the northern border areas of Bohemia and
Moravia. For the republic, this
area was of vital economic and strategic importance.
When Hitler became German Chancellor in 1933, the nationalism of the
German population in the Sudetenland grew.
This nationalism would provide a pretext for Hitler's demands to annex
the territory. Regrettably,
Czechoslovakia had entrusted its security to an alliance with the West European
powers. Isolationism and pacifism
in these countries led to the abandonment of Czechoslovakia in a doomed effort to
placate Hitler. Britain and France,
eager to avoid war, signed the Munich Agreement on September 30, 1938, which
ceded the Sudetenland to the Third Reich. President Eduard Benes had little choice but to accept the
Munich agreement, since war without Allied support had no chance of success.
The Czechoslovak Republic lasted but
a short time afterward. Nazi troops
occupied Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939. In
agreement with the Third Reich, the Slovaks declared independence.
The end of World War II in 1945 brought restoration to the Czechoslovak
Republic. President Benes became
the head of a National Front coalition government, which included the KSČ.
The communists seized power in February 1948.
Following the takeover, Stalinization and integration into the Soviet
Bloc took place. The Czechoslovak
Socialist Republic was proclaimed in 1960.
Czech and Slovak nationalism again resurged in the Prague Spring of 1968,
an effort to establish a democratic form of socialism - "Socialism with a
human face." Warsaw Pact
troops invaded in August 1968 to suppress this counterrevolutionary reform
movement.
The
leader of Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring, Alexander Dubček, was allowed
to stay in power for a short while after. In
April 1969, Gustav Husak replaced him as First Secretary of the KSČ.
Husak's regime began "normalization," and reformists were
purged from all leadership positions throughout the government.
Husak became president in 1975, and would remain in this position until
ousted by the Velvet Revolution in 1989. His
government enforced rigid ideological conformity to the leadership of the Soviet
Union. Educational and employment
opportunities were dependent on an individual's political reliability, and
dissent, real or imagined, was followed by arrests and trials.
Then, in 1989, after cracks began to appear in the hardline armor of its
East European neighbors, the people of Czechoslovakia swiftly and peacefully
ousted their Communist hardliners in a popular uprising sparked by the brutal
suppression of a peaceful demonstration on 17 November.
In the space of a few short weeks, the Czechoslovak people would regain
control of their political, social, and cultural future for the first time in
forty-two years. Havel’s new
coalition government would lead the country into free elections in June 1990,
when the voters would overwhelmingly endorse the ruling coalition of Civic
Forum and Public Against Violence. These
newfound freedoms would, however, force Czechoslovakia to face controversial
issues suppressed or ignored over long years of socialist
"brotherhood." Could the
new government, still shod with many Communist apparatchiks at lower levels,
overcome the lethargy and malaise of 42 years of pretense and centralized
bureaucracy? Could such a moral,
ethical, and open man as Havel, who seemed politically naive, become an
effective politician, cutting the hard-nosed deals that the country and its
economy will require?
Such were the circumstances and questions that awaited Czechoslovakia,
and which molded it in the past, bringing it forward to its third republic.
We must, however, examine the history of Czechoslovakia in more depth
before we move on to the events of the Velvet Revolution.
Chapter 2
