Tue Feb 14 2012
Twenty years ago, one week after the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of young people thronged Prague in a show of bravery and determination, demanding an end to decades of repressive rule under Communism.
What became known as the Velvet Revolution toppled another domino as Czechoslovakia's authoritarian regime toppled in the face of the peaceful protest. By Dec. 10, a new, democratic government was in place; by year end, Vaclav Havel, the playwright who had spent several years in prison for daring to challenge Communism, was the nation's new president.
Czechoslovakia is no more -- the nation split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993 in a more or less amicable divorce -- but the spirit of freedom celebrated by the brave students who thronged Wenceslas Square on Nov. 17. 1989 endures.
Undeterred by history -- the Prague Spring of 1968 was crushed by Soviet tanks -- or a crackdown by police, who beat the demonstrators, the crowds who gathered to seek freedom 20 years ago refused to back down. "You have lost already!" they chanted to those who sought, in vain, to regain control.
The Velvet Revolution helped fuel the flames of freedom as the dominoes continued to topple throughout the Iron Curtain and then consumed the Soviet Union itself.
Today, the Czech Republic is a pro-Western ally, a member of NATO and the European Union, and a generation of young people in Prague have come to maturity taking for granted a sense of freedom that would have seemed like a dream for the generation before them. They owe a great deal to the courageous students who demanded freedom and refused to back down.
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