Velvet Revolution

Pavel Žáček - The Emergency Security Measures and “Operation Student”: An Overview of the Activities of SNB Units and Troops of the Ministry of the Interior on November 17, 1989
Abstract

The intervention by the communist security forces on November 17, 1989, as part of an emergency security operation and the security measures codenamed “Student”, carried out in the centre of Prague and especially on Národní Street was to become a milestone in modern Czechoslovak history. The operation, whose objective was to prevent the student demonstration from moving to the centre of the capital, was   led by the Head Commander of the Municipal Directorate of the National Security Corps, Colonel JUDr. Michal Danišovič, and the main public order unit was the Trainee Emergency Brigade under the command of Major Bedřich Houbal, complemented by forces from the Special Purposes Section, State Security officers, four reserves from the local District National Corps Offices and other support and auxiliary units. As a reserve unit, which eventually played a key role in controlling the movement of the demonstrators and the operation as a whole, there was a professional operation unit – the Public Security Emergency Regiment under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Břetislav Zdráhala. Both units surrounded the core of the demonstrators on Národní Street, pushing them from both sides after a brutal intervention and the deployment of two armoured vehicles and eventually forcing them into a side street and scattering them. A dramatic role in this was played by members of the anti-terrorist squad headed by Major Petr Šesták who, in cooperation with secret police officers, selected individuals from among the demonstrators and, like the intervention squad members, brutally beat them with batons in the archway of Kaňkův Palace. The dis- proportionately harsh response by the security forces gradually led to the downfall of the communist totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia.

Klára Pinerová, Michal Louč - 1989: The Czech Prison System at a Crossroads
Abstract

The Czechoslovak prison system was at a crossroads after 1989. It was clear to every- one that it would have to be humanised and modernised, and also that a system would have to be set up to ensure respect for convicts’ basic human rights. This was an elaborate task, complicated especially by the fact that a successful reform depended on many factors, from human resources to the economy of the newly established state. The paper explores three topics. The first part outlines the key trends in the   prison system in the last years of the Communist Party dictatorship. After that, the authors analyse the situation in the prison system during the so-called Velvet Revolution in 1989 and shortly afterwards. That time saw repeated riots in the prisons, the establishment of prisoner organisations as well as prison staff who were critical of the previous development of prison system, and the start of the process of ridding the prison staff of its most compromised officers. The third part describes the post-revolution transformation of the basic operational principles of the Czechoslovak prison system, which can be summarised as depoliticisation, demilitarisation and humanisation.

Juraj Marušiak - 1989 in Slovakia – Between Reform and Radical Change
Abstract

The author elaborates on the political development in Slovakia at the end of the 1980s, namely in 1989, which was crucially influenced by a document entitled Bratislava/nahlas (Bratislava/Aloud) published by a group of Bratislava-based environmentalists in 1987, and the so-called Candlelight Demonstration, which demanded that freedom of religion be respected, organised by the so-called Christian dissent activists in Bratislava on March 25, 1988. Both events were also a certain momentum for those active in independent initiatives in Bohemia. One other key moment in the consolidation of the opposition was the trial with a group of dissidents from Bratislava, the so-called Bratislava Five, arrested in August 1989. This paper tries to uncover the factors which made the situation in both parts of the former joint Czechoslovak state similar and how the story of the “fall of the communist regime” in Slovakia differed from that of the Czech lands. It outlines the “lines of conflict” which had a decisive influence on the development of events in the political course. It also analyses how prepared the agents of the November 1989 events were for the political changes, their “politicisation”, but also uncovers specific conflicts that resulted from Slovak–Hungarian relations and the question of the position of Slovakia within the Czechoslovak Federation. The paper tries to answer the question of the extent to which the development at the time influenced the political processes immediately after the fall of the communist regime. One specific aspect of the changes in Slovakia was the rel- atively permeable boundary between the “official” and “unofficial” discourse, which provided room for a non-realised model of negotiated transition. The political trans- formation in Slovakia was principally influenced not only by nationwide events but also local impulses.