The Velvet Revolution

JAN 01 1989 · 12:00

Letná Plain, 25 November 1989. Half a million Czechs and Slovaks gather above the city. Dubček spoke; the crowd jingled their keys. Place: Národní třída, Wenceslas Square, Letná plain, Civic Forum (Laterna Magika theatre) Figures: Václav Havel, playwright and dissident · Alexander Dubček, returning · Marián Čalfa, prime minister · the student march of November 17 On the evening of November 17, 1989, an officially permitted student march commemorating the Nazi closure of Czech universities fifty years earlier turns, on Národní třída, against the regime. The white-helmeted riot police, the bílé přilby, beat the marchers against the shopfronts. Around two hundred students are injured. A rumor (false) circulates that a student has been killed. The rumor is enough. Within forty-eight hours, Civic Forum is founded in the dressing rooms of the Laterna Magika theatre. Václav Havel, just out of prison again, is its inevitable face. The dramatist who has written about the absurdity of regimes now finds himself writing the regime's exit.