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Current AffairsFirst post-communist Czechoslovak foreign minister Jiří Dienstbier dies
Czech Senator Jiří Dienstbier, a leading figure of the Czech dissident
movement and the country’s first post-communist foreign minister died
over the weekend at the age of 73. A former dissident and journalist, Mr.
Dienstbier served on many committees and worked as a UN rapporteur on human
rights in the former Yugoslavia, but in people’s minds he will always be
remembered as the man who stood next to the former West German foreign
minister Hans Dietrich Genscher and cut through the barbed wire of the Iron
Curtain. More
MailboxMailbox
This week in Mailbox: The 21st anniversary of the 1989 Velvet Revolution, a
“Czech” week in Denmark, the Czech hard candy Hašlerky. Listeners
quoted: Ruth O'Connor, Hans Verner Lollike, Chun-Quan Meng. More
SpecialChildren of the Revolution: politics and writing in today’s Czech Republic
A few days ago Radio Prague and the Czech Literature Portal, this country’s foremost website promoting Czech
literature abroad, got together to hold the first of a series of public
literary discussions. David Vaughan’s guests were two of the Czech
Republic’s best known literary figures, the novelist Petra Hůlová and
the critic and translator Martin Machovec. They were joined by an
international audience at one of Prague’s most atmospheric literary dens,
the Shakespeare and Sons bookshop, tucked away in one of
the ancient houses in Prague’s Lesser Quarter. The subject was politics
and literature; twenty years after the fall of communism, are the two in
any way compatible here in the Czech context?
More
One on OneMisha Glenny - UK writer with close ties to Prague
The English journalist and writer Misha Glenny is perhaps best known for
his work covering the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the hit 2008 book
McMafia. His first book The Rebirth of History, published in 1990, focused
on the post-communist political landscape of Eastern Europe, including
Czechoslovakia, a country with which he had a close association. Indeed,
Glenny had studied Czech in Prague, and remembers with fondness his time
here in the early ‘80s. When we spoke recently at the close of the Forum
2000 conference in the city, he recalled his very first visit, towards the
end of 1980. More
Current AffairsNewly uncovered footage shows how Communists wanted to depict events of ‘89
Historians at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes have
announced they recently uncovered previously unknown video footage in the
archives on the events of 1989. Footage shot – and heavily manipulated -
by the former regime’s secret police, the StB. Carefully presented images
and a propagandistic voice-over in the “documentary” were meant to give
a diametrically different picture of public demonstrations which shook the
country 21 years ago, suggesting they were a provocation and a sham.
Swiftly overcome by events, though, the Communists soon shelved the
material, and it was subsequently forgotten.
More
Current AffairsItalia ’90 a World Cup to remember for Czechoslovak fans able to travel freely after fall of communism
With just days remaining until the World Cup kicks off in South Africa,
football fever is beginning to grip fans around the globe. The Czech
Republic failed to qualify this year, but many will have fond memories of
the 1990 World Cup in Italy, when supporters from Czechoslovakia were
finally able to travel freely to a major soccer tournament.
More
Current AffairsGeneration 89 meets to debate the past and plan the future
Generation 89, currently underway in four European capitals, is a project
intended to bring together young people from different backgrounds and
different experiences to debate their common future in the European Union.
Participants from nine EU member states are meeting in Bucharest, Brussels,
Prague and Warsaw to talk about where they came from and where they want to
go. The project was initiated by the Romanian Cultural Institute to mark
the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and
co-financed by the European Commission. Dan Mitra Duta, the project
manager, explains the idea behind it.
More
Czech Books“We were criminally naïve”: a former Czech PM looks back to the Velvet Revolution
Since the fall of communism, Petr Pithart has been a central Czech
political figure. As one of the first people to sign the human rights
manifesto, Charter 77, he spent the last years of the communist regime as
a
political dissident. But as the regime collapsed in November 1989, he shot
to prominence – firstly in Civic Forum, which brought together those
fighting for an end to one-party rule, and then as the first
post-communist
prime minister of the Czech part of the Czechoslovak federation. Later he
went on to be chairman of the Czech Senate and today he serves as the
Senate’s deputy chairman. Senator Pithart has just published a book with
the simple title “1989”, in which he reflects on the events and the
legacy of the time. Surprisingly the book is one of the first studies to
be
written by a prominent actor in the Velvet Revolution. The book is
striking
for the openness with which it discusses the mistakes that were made,
mistakes that in Pithart’s view, hastened the split of Czechoslovakia
and
sowed the seeds for many of the political problems in the Czech Republic
today. When I went to see Senator Pithart, he began by telling me that he
was drawn into the fray of politics more or less by chance. More
Current Affairs20 years after, Václav Havel seen as key figure in transition to democracy
In a memorable moment of history, dissent and playwright Václav Havel was
elected the first post-communist president of Czechoslovakia 20 years ago.
His inauguration put the final seal on the country’s road to democracy.
Two decades later, most Czechs believe Mr Havel’s role in the process was
crucial.
More
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