Czechs celebrate fall of communism 20 years ago

PRAGUE — Thousands marched through the Czech capital Tuesday in commemoration of a student protest 20 years ago that grew into the human tidal wave sweeping away the communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia.

Today, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are European Union and NATO members. While the world recession has left its mark, their economies are among the strongest of the continent's former communist nations, and their democracies among the most resilient. Pragmatic Czechs in particular have moved into the European mainstream, with most citizens spending little time on any normal day looking back on their Velvet Revolution.

But Tuesday was no normal day for the several thousand Czechs gathered to relive the hours that led to their nation's democratic triumph.

Nov. 17, 1989, began with fiery speeches at a university campus in Prague, inspiring thousands of students to march downtown toward Wenceslas Square. As darkness fell, police cracked down hard, beating demonstrators with truncheons and injuring hundreds in the melee.

Unbowed, the crowds mushroomed in the ensuing days, with demonstrators chanting: "You have lost already!"

They were right. Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and communism in the region, by Dec. 10, Czechoslovakia had a new government. On Dec. 29, Vaclav Havel, a dissident playwright who had spent several years in prison, was elected the country's first democratic president in a half century by a parliament still dominated by communist hard-liners.

For many retracing the march, it was a joyful return to a time when repression proved no match for people power, which in a string of protests brought down the Iron Curtain across East Europe.

"I came here with hope," said Renata Krbcova, 45, who studied at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in 1989 and joined the ranks of those that rolled through the capital.

"It was a wonderful feeling, after all we hoped that something had to happen," she said.

Krbcova, who teaches Italian and Italian literature at a Prague high school, said she came again to celebrate.

"Not everything is perfect," she said. "But overall, it is on the right track."

On Tuesday, Havel, President Vaclav Klaus and Prime Minister Jan Fischer joined hundreds of people laying flowers and lighting candles at a monument marking the site of the brutal clash.