20 Years of Freedom

Today’s post is in honour of my adopted home and the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism.

On the 17th of November 1989 life began to change dramatically for the citizens of Czechoslovakia. By the 29th of December, Alexander Dubček, instigator of the Prague Spring reforms in 1968 was speaker of the federal Czechoslovak parliament and Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright and poet was elected President of Czechoslovakia.

Every 17th of November the Czech and Slovak Republics celebrate the ‘Struggle for Freedom and Democracy’. In some ways to think that a whole 20 years has passed, in other ways it’s an incredibly short time – recent enough for me to remember what it was like watching events unfold on TV as first East Germany then other Communist regimes crumbled under the will of the people.

There’s been an immense amount of change here since the Velvet Revolution . First the Velvet Divorce in 1993, and shortly thereafter Havel was (re-)elected as President of the Czech Republic (and as a new country his two term limit started anew).

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