Sunday, November 19th, 2017

	November 17th, 1989
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Two days ago, we had a national holiday, one of the most  important in
our country -  commemorating November 17, 1989, when  communist regime
in   then  Czechoslovakia  wrote the  last  chapter of its  existence.
Peaceful student  demonstration was brutally stopped by police forces,
people  beaten  to  blood.  Communist  media  were  silent  about  the
violence, but in just few days quite  everybody knew, protests started
in every larger city and in the  beginning of December it was all over
- after 41 years. 

S ince  the  end  of  WWII  all   right-wing  parties  were  banned in
Czechoslovakia as they  supposedly  collaborated with Nazi  regime, so
even in the period  between 1945 and 1948, which is now  considered as
being  more-or-less  democratic, we  had  only  four  legal  political
parties and all of them had "people's", "social" or "communist" in the
name. Most of  industry was  nationalized  without  compensation. More
than 2.5 million of Germans, who lived here for half a  millennium and
were the second largest  nationality in pre-war  Czechoslovakia (after
Czechs  and  before   Slovaks),  were   permanently   expelled,  their
citizenship was revoked and property  confiscated. Not a very good era
to live, but the worst was yet to start. 

In February 1948, communists used  constitutional crisis to get rid of
two  of   the  other  parties   and   absorbed the  third,  creating a
single-party  government. Soon  constitution was amended and Communist
party of  Czechoslovakia was constituted as "the only leading force in
the state".  Political trials begun, more than two hundred people were
executed,  thousands  sentenced to decades in prison or forced to work
in  uranium mines (almost all of our uranium was  exported to USSR, to
be  used in  atomic  bombs).  Farmers  were  forced to give all  their
property to collective farms, private  entrepreneurs were at first not
allowed to have   employees (only  state-owned  companies could employ
people) and then  completely  banned  within few  years.  Borders were
closed and on the west side of the  country  "enhanced" with  electric
fences, mine fields and men with dogs and sub-machine guns. 

Nothing could be done  without consent of the  Communist party. People
were forced to cooperate or  brainwashed by state  propaganda to do so
voluntarily. You  couldn't  hope for a  good job or for  your  kids to
study, if you  weren't loyal citizen of your  socialist  motherland or
even  better - member of the party. That's why there were one and half
million party members in a ten million nation. 

The only reform movement - in 1968 - was  suppressed by five armies of
fellow  socialist countries and after that yet another round of purges
started.  This  time  nobody was  executed,  people even  didn't go to
prison, but they lost their jobs or were  thrown out of  universities.
And  since  everybody was  supposed to  work, both  usually meant much
worse job. 

In the  November  days, 28 years ago, I was six years old. I  remember
just  few  things  from  the era  before,  like  calling  kindergarten
teachers "comrade teacher" or being  frequently told not to say things
I heard at home to anyone outside the family. I know most of the stuff
from my family  members or from history books. And I'm quite happy the
world today is the way it is -  without  November 17, 1989 it would be
much different and certainly not better.