History | Topic Archive

The legendary Czech actor Radoslav Brzobohatý passed away suddenly on Wednesday, a day before his eightieth birthday. Some of his most famous film roles came in the 1960’s, but the prolific television, theatre and movie star had dozens of roles to his name.

On December 29 1989, Czechoslovakia’s Federal Parliament elected Václav Havel as the country’s president. In one of the many paradoxes of the Velvet Revolution, this was the same communist-dominated parliament that had previously fought so hard to stem the flow of change.

In last week’s From the Archives, we heard Jaroslav Hutka, singing at the huge demonstration that took place in Prague’s Letná park on November 25 1989. This was over a week after the Velvet Revolution had begun, but the hard liners in the communist party were still clinging on to power. The demonstration was a sign of the huge momentum for change that had built up in the previous days, and despite the cold weather, with sleet and snow, it was attended by nearly a million people.

Born in Prague, he lived in Brussels, Stuttgart, Cologne, and later London and Antwerp, meticulously recording his surroundings and reflecting the society around him in his art. Václav or Wenceslaus, or even Wenzel, Hollar sounds like a modern-day European artist, but he actually lived four hundred years ago. Although he was brought up to go into law, Hollar became an etcher and draughtsman, whose work now provides us with beautifully detailed depictions of the people, architecture, landscapes and even a battle that took place in Europe in the seventeenth

General Tomáš Sedláček, a World War II veteran who spent nine years in communist jails, died on Monday aged 94. A respected soldier, he fought both on the western and eastern fronts of the war before landing a life sentence by Czechoslovakia’s communist court. But his faith in freedom and democracy never waivered, and after 1989, he took up the cause of those who suffered under communism.

Last week we heard how a song, Marta Kubišová’s “A Prayer for Marta”, came to symbolize the period of the Velvet Revolution. But there were other songs and singers who also captured the spirit of the time. One of them was Jaroslav Hutka. After signing Charter 77, he had been bullied into exile in 1978, and all his songs and recordings banned. As soon as the revolution of November 1989 began, he came back home, and in one of the most moving moments of the period, he appeared at the vast demonstration held on Prague’s Letná Plain on November 25.

A remembrance ceremony on Tuesday marked the 44th anniversary of the beginning of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The first days of the invasion were closely tied to the Czech Radio building in front of which bloody clashes took place and at least 15 civilians were killed.

In last week’s From the Archives, we heard how Czechoslovak Radio reported on the student demonstration that sparked the Velvet Revolution on November 17 1989. Initially the radio toed the official line, defending the violent police clampdown, but gradually the spirit of revolution spread through the corridors of our headquarters here in Vinohradská Street. Every day Wenceslas Square filled with tens of thousands of people, as it became increasingly clear that the communists’ hold on power was weakening.

Immediately after the end of the Second World War, Czechoslovakia became a testing ground in the contest between democracy and communist one-party rule. In Prague, the United States was hoping to challenge Stalin’s aim of including the country within the Soviet empire by supporting Czech and Slovak democrats in their uneven struggle against the communists. In his new book entitled On the Edge of Cold War – American Diplomats and Spies in Post-war Prague, Boston University professor of history Igor Lukeš explores the US efforts to counter the communist

November 17 1989 did not begin dramatically. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the execution of nine Prague students who had led protests in 1939 against the German occupation. Various officially sanctioned commemorations were taking place and the centre of Prague was filled with students.