Context

VELVET REVOLUTION

The process of the collapse of Communism culminated in much of Central Europe in November 1989. The Berlin Wall fell on the 9th of November 1989 after Hungary and Poland. A student demonstration was brutally suppressed in Prague on 17th of November 1989 leading to the “Velvet Revolution”. Changes also came about later in Bulgaria, Romania, the Baltic States and in parts of former Yugoslavia.

The main figure in the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia was the playwright and dissident Václav Havel who was elected President of Czechoslovakia on 29th of December 1989.