On November 17, 1989, an of?cially approved demonstration commemorating Jan Opletal and the Nazi destruction of the Czech universities in 1939 was attacked by riot police in a downtown Prague street. The attacks sparked off a wave of protest and demonstration that led to the rapid toppling of the communist government.
Truly, it seemed (as contemporary posters stated) that what had taken ten years in Poland, ten months in Hungary, and ten weeks in East Germany had only taken ten days in Czechoslovakia. The collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia did not entirely resemble the negotiated handovers achieved in Poland and Hungary, nor did it result in the mass violence that riveted world attention on Bucharest in December. For its peaceful, even goodhumored qualities it was quickly dubbed ‘‘The Velvet Revolution.''
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