On the Velvet Revolution

Hey! A post! It's been some time, hasn't it?


First of all, this post is intended mainly for my Czech readers, but actually I don't think I have any other than them, and I will also try to keep it comprehensible for everyone, even if the main idea might remain hidden for those who don't know what the Velvet Revolution is.

So. (If you don't have much time, skip the first paragraph (or leave it for later))
Our History lessons , as they proceed along the historical timeline on and on, entered the 20th century some time ago. Our teacher specializes in that part of history, and so she decided she will give us some individual homework for it. That way, I got to create two papers, or maybe reports or even essays, I am not quite sure what the English term for what the Czechs call "referat" actually is. One of them was about two people important for Czech history in the 20th century, and the other was supposed to be about some sort of unsolved but still important Czech problem from recent history, a so called skeleton in the cupboard ("kostlivec ve skrini" would be the Czech metaphor for that). The people aren't that important, but my choice of this "skeleton" turned out to be very inspiring indeed.

I wrote my paper about Ludvik Zifcak. He was a secret agent of the StB, the communist internal intelligence service which was infamous for various acts of terrorism, torture, political imprisonments and other nasty things. Now as I said before, I hope you know what the Velvet revolution is - in short, it is a revolution which took place in (former) Czechoslovakia in winter 1989 - spring 1990, and essentially changed this country from a communist and totalitarian regime to a democracy. And what do Ludvik Zifcak and the StB have in common with it? Probably more than you would expect.

The first and most important part of the revolution was a student demonstration on 17th November 1989, which was peaceful (even though not legal to the extent it was carried out to), but on "Narodni trida", close to Wenceslas Square, was stopped, surrounded by state police and brutally dissolved. That's the moment things started changing - more demonstrations, general strike, new government, another new government, new president, free elections, democracy.

The problem lies in the first demonstration. Some people say that the StB actually had reasons for letting it happen exactly the way it happened, that means leading the people to Narodni trida and beating them up (and even spreading a rumor about a student dying in the fray - that student was to be played on Narodni trida by Zifcak). Among these people is Vaclav Bartuska, a student who attended the demonstration and was later a member of a commitee that was supposed to supervise the investigation of the events of 17th November. And this guy has got some proof for that - if you want to learn more, just read his book "Polojasno" ("Partly Cloudy" or "Partly Clear", but I guess it wasn't translated to English anyway).

Of course you can choose not to believe that - but then you have to deal with some facts - for example photos of the demonstration which show Zifcak among the people leading the demonstration, or Zifcak's interrogation, in which he uncovered the whole conspiracy.


Now to the main idea. I do not want to force you to believe some conspiratorial theories. But two things are quite clear:

1) We will never learn the full truth about the revolution. There are so many questions to which answers are known only by people who will never share them - because it would harm them or someone else, like the Bohemian-Moravian Communist Party.

2)Perhaps more importantly - the Velvet revolution was not an idealistic peaceful change from dictatorship to democracy. It was not so that dissidents decided OK, let's do it, and convinced the people to demonstrate again and again and to go on strike. I would like to use a metaphor here:
I think people tend to believe that it was like a chess game between the good and the evil - the nation being the pawns on the good side, the dissidents among the other pieces (and Vaclav Havel being the good king). But actually, I think a more realistic chess game would be between the gray and the red, where all the dissidents and ordinary people are just like the queen on the gray side, but all the other pieces are someone else - the revolution could never take place without many other events and circumstances - such as political liberalization in Hungary, but also supposed internal communist disputes, or disputes between the USSR and Czechoslovakia. Of course, the red side couldn't be beaten without the gray queen (most probably), but the queen surely couldn't win alone. And it has not been the victory of the good side, it has been the victory of everyone who wasn't directly associated with the regime (therefore gray vs red). That's why we now have StB agents all over government institutions and offices, and communists aren't banned, and so on.
Had I been a student who took part in the revolution, with all my democratic ideals, I would have been extremely angry about that. The only reason why I am not is that for me, the Velvet Revolution is history. It is an event, an important one, but just as important to me as any other historical event of the same format, like, for example, the opposite of the Velvet Revolution, 25th February 1948, when the communists took over. It might seem frightening, as for people who did live through the revolution I can imagine that their view is completely different. But I suppose that is how the future generation will consider this revolution, and everyone will have to get used to it.


Wow, I actually managed to write down the idea I wanted to... but probably in an incomprehensible way. Anyway, if you are reading this, you must be a hardcore reader of my blog :-D Thank you for that.

P. S. my paper (in Czech) is available at http://uloz.to/1440400/zifcak.doc
If any of you actually read that, you win a free "kobliha" for being a super crazy maniac hardcore reader. Just let me know you did it.