The Velvet Revolution: six weeks that ended communist rule

On 17 November 1989 a student march in Prague, officially permitted, ended in a narrow street where riot police closed in from both sides and beat the demonstrators. By 29 December the same year, a playwright who had spent years in and out of prison was sitting in the president's office at Prague Castle. That is a little over six weeks. Czechs sometimes say the revolution was fast and the change that followed was slow.

The name Velvet Revolution comes from the largely peaceful nature of the change. In Slovakia it is also called the Gentle Revolution. Either way, 17 November is a public holiday, and Národní třída fills with candles and flowers.

The setting: a regime out of options

By autumn 1989 Czechoslovakia was surrounded by change. Poland had a non-Communist government, Hungary had opened its border to the West, and in early November the Berlin Wall fell. The Czechoslovak leadership, described in Czechoslovakia under communism, was ageing and had resisted reform. Opposition existed in small circles: the Charter 77 signatories, independent groups of ecologists and young people, and church activists. The mass of the population stayed quiet.

The immediate occasion was the anniversary of a 1939 event. On 17 November 1939 the Nazi occupiers had executed student leaders and closed Czech universities after a demonstration for Jan Opletal, a medical student who had been fatally shot. The date became International Students' Day. In 1989 students in Prague organised an event at Albertov, and the authorities allowed it.

17 November

Thousands of young people walked from Albertov towards Vyšehrad and then turned towards the centre, chanting for freedom and carrying candles. On Národní třída, near the Perštýn crossroads, riot police stopped them, closed the exits and beat many of the students. Many were injured.

A rumour spread that a student had been killed. It proved false, but it travelled fast and helped to mobilise people. The beating was real, and it was enough. Actors and students declared a strike the next day, and theatres closed.

Civic Forum and the street

On the evening of 19 November, opposition activists gathered at the Drama Club (Činoherní klub) and founded the Občanské fórum, the Civic Forum, as a loose umbrella for the opposition, with Václav Havel as its central figure. Its first demands included the resignation of the leaders who had approved the police action and the release of political prisoners. In Slovakia, a parallel movement called Public Against Violence took shape.

Within days, large demonstrations were meeting daily on Wenceslas Square and, later, on the Letná plain, where hundreds of thousands gathered. The slogan "Havel to the Castle" appeared. Crowds jangled their keys as a signal that the regime's time was up. The Czechoslovak media, which had at first reported the events under strict control, slowly began to report what was happening.

Beyond Prague

The revolution was not only a Prague event. Within days students and actors had set up strike committees and carried news to other towns, speaking at factory gates and in squares. In Bratislava, Public Against Violence was founded on 19 November, the same day as the Civic Forum. Theatres across the country stopped performing plays and read declarations to the audience instead. Newspapers and television changed more slowly, which is why word of mouth and handwritten leaflets mattered so much in the first week. For many Czechs outside Prague, the memory is of a crowded square, a cold evening and a rattle of keys.

The regime gives way

The Communist leadership first tried to wait out the protests. On 24 November the party's general secretary and the entire Presidium resigned. Alexander Dubček, the hero of 1968 whose story is told in the Prague Spring and 1968 explained, appeared with Havel on a balcony above Wenceslas Square to enormous cheers. The general strike of 27 November, which lasted two hours at noon, showed that workers and the wider public supported the opposition.

Negotiations followed between the Civic Forum and the government led by Ladislav Adamec, then by Marián Čalfa. On 10 December President Gustáv Husák appointed the first government with a non-Communist majority in decades, and then resigned. The Federal Assembly, which still contained mostly Communist deputies, accepted constitutional changes that removed the party's leading role, and added new members from the opposition. Dubček was elected chairman of the Federal Assembly on 28 December. On 29 December the Assembly elected Havel president.

Why the change was peaceful

Several things made a quiet transition possible. The regime had lost confidence in itself and had no outside backing, since the Soviet Union under Gorbachev had signalled it would not intervene. Parts of the party leadership saw an orderly handover as the safest course. The opposition stayed disciplined and avoided violence and revenge, and Havel insisted on civility. The crowds were huge and peaceful, and the security forces were not ready to fire on them.

None of it was simple or inevitable. Historians still discuss how much of the change came from below and how much from calculation inside the party, and the role of the secret police on 17 November remains debated. The truth is probably a mix of the two.

What followed

Free elections took place in June 1990 and Civic Forum won in the Czech lands. Soviet troops left in 1991. The country set about creating a market economy, a process explored in Czech privatisation in the 1990s explained, and began its path towards NATO and the EU, traced in Czech entry into NATO and the EU. The federation itself dissolved on 31 December 1992. Havel remained a major figure until his death in 2011, as president of Czechoslovakia and then of the Czech Republic.

Opinion of the revolution is more mixed now than in 1989. Many celebrate it, some are disappointed by its social consequences, and the 1990s are viewed with ambivalence. The date itself remains a shared reference.

How to find out more

In Prague, the memorial at Národní 16 is the obvious place to start. The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes publishes research on the period, and Prague Castle carries biographical material about Havel.

Frequently asked questions

Why is it called the Velvet Revolution?

Because power changed hands with almost no violence. In Slovakia the same events are also called the Gentle Revolution.

What triggered it?

The police attack on a permitted student march on Národní třída in Prague on 17 November 1989.

Who led it?

The Civic Forum in the Czech lands and Public Against Violence in Slovakia, with Václav Havel as the best-known figure.

When did Havel become president?

On 29 December 1989, when the Federal Assembly elected him.