The main difference between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution was that the former was mostly the work of Communist party members and others who wanted to bring about 'socialism with a human face.'
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Hungarian communists were the most talented. They convinced everybody that reforming the communist party was better than making a new party.
I just happen to know quite a lot of what happened in Czechoslovakia between 1968 and the fall of Communism.
For those of us imprisoned in Poland, the Prague Spring was a harbinger of hope.
Karl Marx was in favor of socialist and communist-socialist revolutions, but he had a pretty nuanced view about it.
The Polish freedom movement of 1968 lost its confrontation with police violence; the Prague Spring was crushed by the armies of five Warsaw Pact members. But in both countries, 1968 gave birth to a new political consciousness.
I am not a communist and neither is the revolutionary movement.
Prague is the Paris of the '90s.
It's hard to imagine the whole punk movement without The Velvet Underground. I toured with them when they did their reunion tour, and no one sounds like that; they are a very unique-sounding band.
Through the inspiration of Vaclav's words, the courage of his dissidence and the integrity of his leadership, Czechoslovakia successfully transitioned from an authoritarian state to a free democracy at the heart of Europe.
In Czechoslovakia in 1968, communist reformers appealed to democratic ideals that were deeply rooted in the country's pre-second world war past.