Photo: Petr Zatloukal
When it comes to the fall of Communism in Czechia, most attention is concentrated on what happened in Prague. And understandably so, as it was the real center of the revolution. However, there were many dramatic moments in smaller cities in the provinces. And that is the theme of this Czechast special.
As a student of Czech and English at Palacky University in Olomouc some 150 miles east of the capital, I doubted that the protests would spread to the regions. I did not believe that the communist regime was ripe to collapse and I was determined to defect to the West as soon as I had finished my studies.
To my surprise and that of many other skeptics, even students in the provincial city of Olomouc were already fed up with the totalitarian government. Tomáš Kasal was a student of history at the Faculty of Arts:
“In the evening on Sunday, 19th November, I happened to be at the dormitories for students of the Science Faculty. My then-girlfriend and now-wife were staying there. There was already some commotion: somebody was running along the corridors asking everybody to meet in front of the dormitory. He was talking about students having been beaten in Prague. Frankly, none of us knew what the heck was going on. Nevertheless, we did walk out of the dorm. It is hard to say how many students were there, I would say a hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred.
See the rest here.
Author: Vít Pohanka