Word: czechoslovakias
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...PRAGUE, Czechoslovakia--Sirens wailed, horns honked and bells pealed at noon yesterday in Prague and other cities to mark a dramatic opposition victory that ended the Communists' 41-year domination of the government...
Yesterday's brief demonstrations in Czechoslovakia took the place of a general strike that was called off Sunday by opposition leaders after their stunning success in overturning Communist domination of the government...
Before departing from Italy on Friday afternoon, Gorbachev also offered a revisionist view of the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia that crushed the reforms of the Prague Spring. Earlier that day, the new Politburo of the Czechoslovak Communist Party branded the invasion as wrong. Asked at a Milan press conference what he thought about that, Gorbachev tiptoed toward an apology, though without going all the way. The Prague Spring was "an acceptable movement for democracy, renewal and humanization of society," he said. "It was right then and is right...
...Czechoslovakia's 15.5 million citizens have more cause to be astounded by the events of recent weeks than Vaclav Havel? Since the Soviet invasion in 1968, Havel has been the conscience of Prague, a world-famed playwright who might have exploited his status as an intellectual superstar to emigrate to the West, but refused to do so. Instead, Havel, 53, stayed behind, suffering censorship, intermittent police surveillance and repeated jailings so he could continue to give voice to the frustrations and yearnings of a frightened -- and until now mute -- populace...
...brisk rate of change has already created stress fractures between the students, who have their own strike committee, and the Civic Forum, whose leaders are drawn largely from Charter 77, an umbrella opposition group set up in 1977 to defend human and civil rights in Czechoslovakia. The students, who were faster to draw up a concise list of demands, have been irked by the Civic Forum's failure to include younger voices in its deliberations. "The Civic Forum is more experienced," says Monika Pajerova, 23, "but we are more radical." Some within the Civic Forum regard the students as "children...