To the sound of the INA and RFI archives, we relive the “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia. Eight days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Czechs and Slovaks take to the streets on November 17, 1989. Ten days later, Gorbachev publicly condemned the Soviet repression of the Prague Spring in 1968.
Program originally broadcast on 11/21/2009.
” The victim (understand the party leadership) was consenting explains our guest Jacques Rupnik.
This time the Soviet tanks are not sent to Prague. The Czechoslovak liberation movement is not suppressed. And this is the return of the leader of the opposition: Vaclav Havel… He will be elected President of the Republic on December 29, 1989.
Jacques Rupnik is a historian, specialist in Central Europe, Teacher at Sciences Po and research director at CERI. He was born in Prague in 1950 and advised Czech President Vaclav Havel from 1990 to 1992.
► Read also: November 17, 1989: the “Velvet Revolution”
► To listen also: Prague 1989, from the beating of students to the Velvet Revolution
