RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
________________________________________________________
RFE/RL NEWSLINE  16 November 1999

HUNGARIAN JEWS ASK FOR ACTION AGAINST ANTI-SEMITISM. The
Federation of Jewish Religious Communities in Hungary
(MAZSIHISZ) has asked the cabinet to take action against
"fascist, racist, and anti-Semitic" outbreaks that are
causing concern among the public, Hungarian media reported
on 16 November. The statement objects to the planned
rehabilitation of Hungary's World War II Prime Minister
Laszlo Bardossy, the desecration of Jewish cemeteries, and
the publication of ant-Semitic books. Maria Schmidt, an
adviser to Prime Minister Viktor Orban, recently described
the Holocaust as a marginal issue of the war. MAZSIHISZ
expressed the hope that such comments would be rendered
illegal in the criminal code. MSZ

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RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
________________________________________________________
RFE/RL NEWSLINE  17 November 1999

HUNGARY, ROMANIA HOLD JOINT PEACEKEEPING EXERCISE. Some 100
Romanian and Hungarian officers on 15 November began a joint
military peacekeeping exercise in the Romanian city of Arad,
Hungarian media reported on 16 November. It is the first time
the two countries have formed a joint battalion. The official
language of the exercise is English. Both Romanian and
Hungarian military officials stressed the importance of
enhancing mutual trust and cooperation between the two
armies. MSZ


THE VELVET REVOLUTION: A CHRONOLOGY

 by Jolyon Naegele

	Eight months after Alexander Dubcek took office as
Communist Party first secretary and launched the "Prague
Spring" reforms, the five armies of the Soviet-led Warsaw
Pact occupied Czechoslovakia. That move strangled reform not
only in Czechoslovakia but throughout the Soviet bloc for
years to come.
	The post-1968 ferment in Czechoslovakia's socialist
neighbors started with the brutally suppressed Gdansk riots
in Poland in 1970 that toppled communist leader Wladyslaw
Gomulka. Unrest resumed in Poland in summer 1976 with
worker's protests in Radom against price rises. The
Communists once again responded with force.
	The Vatican's election of a Pole, Karol Wojtyla, as pope
in 1978 did much to encourage Poles as well as devout members
of neighboring nations, including the Slovaks. The papal
visit to Poland the following year inspired the birth of the
Solidarity free trade union movement in summer 1980. All
these events also encouraged Czechoslovakia's modest, largely
intellectual opposition.
	But while Poles rarely took the communist system in
which they lived completely seriously, Czechs and Slovaks
did. The legacy of 1968 and the Munich pact of 1939 as well
as the awareness that they were a small country hardly gave
them cause for self-confidence.
	On 13 December 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski
declared martial law in Poland rather than risk a Soviet
invasion. That came as a relief to Czechoslovakia's communist
rulers and a disappointment to those who hoped that the
flames of Solidarity would spread south..
	The Radio Moscow announcement of the death of Soviet
Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev came amid economic,
political, and social stagnation throughout the Soviet bloc.
The brief rule of Brezhnev's two ailing successors, Yuri
Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, ensured that even the word
"reform" continued to be defined by the Czechoslovak
communist party as a "temporary, tactical step backward--
favored by right-wing revisionists."
	The 1985 election of the dynamic Mikhail Gorbachev and
the gradual introduction of his policies of perestroika and
glasnost yet again raised hopes across Czechoslovakia that
change might finally be on the horizon.
	At least as important for the Soviet satellites was
Gorbachev's oft-repeated warning to his fellow Communist
party chiefs at closed door Warsaw Pact summits that the
Soviet Union would no longer run their affairs. Few of the
aging leaders took Gorbachev's words seriously. And some,
particularly Czechoslovakia's leadership, assumed Gorbachev
and his policies were a temporary deviation from the true
Marxist-Leninist line.
	Gorbachev's visit to Czechoslovakia in April 1987 only
reinforced this view as he failed to urge reform or a re-
evaluation of 1968. Perestroika and glasnost remained merely
empty phrases in Czechoslovakia. Prague authorities began
curtailing the distribution of the Soviet press in a bid to
prevent the dissemination of openly critical articles.
Gorbachev's speeches were censored in the Czechoslovak
Communist Party daily "Rude pravo."
	The round-table talks in Poland in early 1989 between
Solidarity and the communist authorities and the Hungarian
parliament's move to re-evaluate its 1956 revolution and
transform itself into a parliamentary democracy contributed
to a sense of change in Czechoslovakia. Elements of a civil
society began to develop in response to the jailing of
dissident playwright Vaclav Havel and others.
	The mass demonstrations in East Germany and the exodus
of East Germans through Czechoslovakia to the West in
September and October 1989 served as an example for
Czechoslovaks. They saw how massive, peaceful civil
disobedience could force a Soviet bloc satellite to rein in
its forces.
	But Czechs were also witness to clashes between their
own police and East German asylum seekers trying to reach the
West German Embassy in Prague. East German police had ceased
beating demonstrators by mid October.
	On 28 October, the 71st anniversary of the founding of
Czechoslovakia, the streets of central Prague once again
echoed with chanting and whistling as police battled peaceful
protesters.
	 The crowd numbered some 20,000--hardly enough to
persuade a government to resign. In marked contrast to
neighboring East Germany, the Prague police resorted to
clubs, water cannon and armored personnel carriers to
disperse the gathering.
	On 9 November, East German authorities opened the Berlin
Wall. Eight days later, on 17 November, a record 50,000
Czechoslovaks turned out for a student demonstration in
Prague which, though officially sanctioned, turned violent as
police surrounded and beat demonstrators. Secret police
disinformation that a student had been killed backfired: in
the following days, the number of protesters soared into the
hundreds of thousands. Opposition activists and intellectuals
founded the Civic Forum two days after what came to be known
as the "massacre."
	The secret police, riot police, Interior Ministry troops
and the army all waited in vain for orders to act. But the
orders never came. As with the Berlin Wall, Moscow monitored
the situation in Prague closely but refrained from any
interference. Within a week, Jakes and the rest of
Czechoslovak Politburo resigned. But equally incompetent
bureaucrats were appointed as replacements.
	Some 700,000 people demonstrated on 25-26 November to
express their outrage and demand an end to communist rule.
The crowd whistled and booed Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec,
who soon resigned.
	On 3 December, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact
issued separate statements condemning their invasion of
Czechoslovakia in 1968. And on 10 December, after he swore in
a new government of opposition activists and moderate
Communists under Communist Prime Minister Marian Calfa, Husak
finally stepped down as president.
	By the end of the month, Dubcek was speaker of the
federal parliament, and the most articulate and outspoken
critic of the communist regime, Vaclav Havel, was president
of Czechoslovakia.

The author is an RFE/RL correspondent based in Prague.

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               Copyright (c) 1999 RFE/RL, Inc.
                     All rights reserved.
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