17th November 1989

On November 17, 1989 the then official and independent student organizations called together a demonstration of university students to Prague Albertov. The officially allowed event developed into the biggest spontaneous protest against the communist regime. After the end of the permitted part of the programme, thousands of people set out to Wenceslas Square. In Národní Street the procession was stopped and then encircled by police hoplites. The demonstration was brutally broken up which resulted in tens of slightly and seriously injured. The next day a hoax spread out among people saying that one of the students, Martin Šmíd, died. The situation caught fire. The very Saturday the university students and Prague theatre actors went on strike and announced a two-hour general strike for November 27. The next day in the Drama Club, the students, artists and representative dissents established a Civic Forum and claimed it a speaker of the Czechoslovak public. Every day the Prague Wenceslas Square was filled by tens of thousands demonstrators, the protests spread out to the whole country. The paralysed communist power and its security apparatus were not able to face such massive protests. On Friday 24th November the leaders of Communist party resigned and on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th the largest demonstrations took part on Letenská pláň. The most of public joined the general strike on November 27. The non-violent overthrow of Communism, known as Velvet Revolution, was complete on December 29, 1989 when an informal leader of dissent, Václav Havel, was elected the Czechoslovak president.

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