Velvet Revolution: Czechoslovakia's Peaceful Overthrow

Riot police attacked a peaceful student demonstration in Prague, beating hundreds of marchers with batons and trapping them in the narrow streets of the Narodni trida. The crackdown, far from crushing dissent, ignited ten days of escalating protests that brought down Czechoslovakia's communist government without a single shot fired. The Velvet Revolution, as it came to be known, was one of the most remarkable regime changes in modern history. The student march on November 17 was officially commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of a Nazi crackdown on Czech universities during World War II. Many participants had broader intentions. The Berlin Wall had fallen eight days earlier, and communist regimes across Eastern Europe were collapsing. Czechoslovakia's hardline government, led by Milos Jakes, had resisted the reforms sweeping the Soviet bloc, maintaining rigid censorship and political repression even as Gorbachev's Soviet Union embraced glasnost and perestroika. The police violence backfired catastrophically. An unconfirmed rumor that a student had been killed spread through Prague overnight, and the next day thousands more took to the streets. Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright who had spent years in communist prisons, emerged as the leader of the opposition through Civic Forum, an umbrella movement formed on November 19. Theaters became organizing centers. Workers joined the students. By November 20, half a million people filled Wenceslas Square. A general strike on November 27 brought the country to a standstill. The communist leadership, unable to count on Soviet military intervention as previous Czechoslovak reformers had faced in 1968, began negotiating. Jakes resigned as party leader. The government agreed to end the Communist Party's monopoly on power. By December 10, a new government with a non-communist majority was sworn in. On December 29, the Federal Assembly elected Havel president.