Today is 17th November, the day when the Velvet Revolution began 18 years ago. Since then there have been years when I did not ‘commemorate’ the event and there were years when I did. A couple of weeks ago I was visiting Eastern Europe and despite the trickle of bandwidth available where I was staying, I found myself watching old clips from the communist era on YouTube. The most surreal was not the absurdity of their content, the ridiculous gravitas of the communist propaganda but the memory of this rubbish being taken seriously and accepted as the norm.
I have written about 17th November 1989 already and what it meant to me. This year I prefer to share some images, which as usual, speak a thousand words. To those, let me add music and words of Karel Kryl whose songs used to be a constant companion in the years before the revolution. I was old enough to understand his bitter humour and lyrical cynicism. There is nothing soft or simple about Kryl’s songs, they are hard hitting, harsh and without hope.
When armies of Warsaw Pact occupied Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968 to suppress the democratization movement of Prague Spring, Karel Kryl released album BratŠ™íÄku zavírej vrátka (Close the Gate, Little Brother), full of songs describing his disgust over the occupation, life under the communist rule, and rude inhumanity and stupidity of the regime. The album was released in early 1969 and was banned and removed from shelves shortly thereafter. This work became an icon of the anti-communist movement for years to come — when he returned from exile in 1989 during the Velvet Revolution, almost every little child in Czechoslovakia knew the lyrics of these songs by heart.
One of his most famous songs has been superimposed on video clips of the two historical events in Czechoslovakia – August 1968 and November 1989.
1968
1989
[Quick and dirty translation]
Little brother, don’t sob, it is not a banshee
Don’t be frightened, it is only soldiers,
Who arrived in sharp-edged metal caravans
Through tears caught on eyelashes we look at each other
Come with me little brother, I fear for you
On the uneven roads, little brother, in children’s shoes
It rains and it is getting dark
This night will not be short
The wolf has a yen for the lamb
Little brother, have you closed the gate?
Little brother, please do not sob
Do not waste your tears
Hold back the curses and save your strength
You mustn’t blame me if we do not make it
Learn the song, it is not so hard
Lean on me, little brother, the road is rough
We will stumble forth, we cannot turn back
It rains and it is getting dark
This night will not be short
The wolf has a yen for the lamb
Little brother, do close the gate!
Please close the gate!
Adriana,
The single comment on the “this rubbish” link you gave was “fuck red scums :)” Whilst hardly Wildean I think it captures something.
Not strictly pertinent, I know, butI will never forget driving home from work and listening to reports from Wenceslas Square, crying from the emotion and admiration I felt for those protesting.
I hope to God I never have cause to show that level of bravery.
I remember it well!
It was about a week after the Berlin Wall went down too. Each time I just sat on the sofa in fron of the telly, and wept and wept with release.
I feel tremendous respect for the people who had the guts to protest, given the price paid – sometimes with their lives – of people who tried and failed in the past. It may be all very well for the cynics to claim – as happened on the Samizdata thread that Adriana linked to – that these regimes would have collapsed anyway, but hindsight is an easy habit to indulge in and useless as a guide to the here and now. The protesters of the late 1980s had no clear idea whether they would succeed or not.
Here’s a large glass of whatever you fancy to them.
Of course, as Johnathan knows, if the regimes would have fallen anyway (regardless of human action) then, for example, the regimes in Cuba and North Korea would have fallen. Many people in these countries have shown great bravery – but things did not go well for them and their lives ended badly (for example under the care of Herman Marks [no relation] and his German Shepherd dogs in the Isle of Pines in Cuba).
The Ludwig Von Mises Institute has recently been sending out old writings meant to show the wisdom of the late Murry Rothbard.
To me these writings showed the unwisdom of Rothbard. For example he would not back Eisenhower in the elections of 1952 not because Eisenhower would not help the people of Eastern Europe – but because Eisenhower was not prepared to abandon the people of Western Europe to the same fate.
Any resistance to the advance of tyranny anywhere (Korea, Europe – anywhere) was wrong, because interventionism by Uncle Sam is wrong by definition (no need for argument or evidence – it is all a priori).
So in the 1980’s President Reagan (according to this line of thought) should simply have declared “anything that happens in Europe, or anywhere else, is of no concern to the United States” and brought home the troops.
Nor does the fall of tyranny mean that it goes away for all time.
For example, tyranny has retured in Russia with the rise of Putin.
The courage of the people in Eastern Europe (for example simply spreading knowledge of those poems would require great courage) is needed not for a day – but for ever.
May the memory of their deeds be kept alive.
As may the deeds of those who tried to help in the long twilight struggle.
“The courage of the people in Eastern Europe is needed not for a day – but for ever.”
A sublime sentiment – of course it applies also to people outside of Eastern Europe.
For example, tyranny has retured in Russia with the rise of Putin.
There is a lot to criticise Putin for, and plenty to criticise as to the direction the country is taking, but we’re some way from a tyranny yet. One of the things I find most bizarre about living in Russia is that despite the massive bureaucracy, plethora of laws, and overbearing regulation, at street level most of it is ignored and on the personal level the place feels a lot more free than the UK. For example, you can smoke pretty much anywhere (not that I smoke), you can drink everywhere (which I do), and if you want to gather 20 of your mates and hold a 6-hour drunken barbecue beside the nearest river (which I have), nobody will come and tell you to stop. And I find the agents of the state, despite representing an overtly authoritarian body, are usually open to negotiations. Currently, my company is facing fines for breaching immigration laws (which change daily). We are in negotiations with the local immigration office to minimise the fine laid out by the federal authorities. Good luck doing that in the UK.
On the subject of protest songs in the Soviet times, I have recently been listening to the works of Russia’s most popular and long-standing rock group, DDT. They were formed in 1982, and almost immediately banned, and listening to the lyrics of some of their early songs, it is easy to see why. On top of many of their songs being clearly political in nature, they were – and are still – a damned fine rock band.
I was there in Prague on November 17, 1989. I remember that as if it were yesterday.
The most dominant feeling was that I (and my friends) felt no fear whatsoever, because the communists were generally perceived as no longer having guts to shoot at us. We felt contempt, absolute contempt for the idiots that ran the country. And lots of anger about ourselves for we had allowed the idiots to rule for much too long.
To the day I wonder why we did not kick their asses any earlier.
Paul: For example, tyranny has returned in Russia with the rise of Putin.
Tim: There is a lot to criticice Putin for, and plenty to criticise as to the direction the country is taking, but we’re some way from a tyranny yet.
For Paul: Kasparov is still alive and has a fighting chance. He’s the canary in the coal mine. For now it’s just an evil version of the Beverly Hillbillies fighting for a space at the table for a cup of Texas Tea.
For Tim: Bread and Circuses my man, bread and circuses. Enjoy it while it lasts and be sure not to buck the ‘system.’ It’s easy to enjoy yourself in a corrupt environment as long as you play the game. Beware the iron fist in that velvet glove; aprapos the events we are talking about here.
Pavel: For us (my family and circle of friends) the fear and the hate was there, pretty much on a daily basis. As dissidents we felt the heavy hand of the communist state all too much to feel no fear going out there to demonstrate. But it was now or never, so I went.
Not until half-way through the demonstrations – I remember the moment well – when workers from some factory declared support for the demonstrators I knew then that the communists lost.
It’s easy to wonder why the monster hasn’t been knocked down earlier, but easy to understand when you have felt its brute force.
That said, the strength of communist states came from the buy-in of thousands ‘little’ people (not just the rulers) who benefited from supporting it in some way.
The strength of Eastern European communist states came from Russian tanks.
The strength of the Russian regime came from the KGB.
While there’s truth in your statement, Jacob, Adriana’s right. I still remember a conversation from ten years ago, staying in a bed-and-breakfast in Rostock for a (small, this is Rostock, after all) academic conference, when we asked the gal running the place how she’d managed to stay in business all those bad years, rather than having her place seized.
Her response, as I recall vividly: “they couldn’t take this away from us — this is private property!”
She apparently never noticed when the state took away the livelihood of half the guys down the street, took half their homes and gave them away to the better- connected … her existence for forty years under the regime was one of unmitigated denial.
Adriana: Most of “small” people never really suffered. Actually, very limited number of people were jailed for political reasons in Czechoslovakai over the last two decades of communism. A few dozens, maybe.
The most efficient way of keeping people under fear was the permanent threat of being fired or children being denied access to high school or university. These small threats were formidably effective in keeping people silent.
It is worth noting that even though Czechoslovakia was occupied by Russians from 1968 until 1990, the Russian army practically never directly interfered in local affairs. The Russian soldiers just sat in their barracks, sometimes they were seen on the road to or from military manoeuvres, but they never micro-managed Czechoslovak politics or economy. Our own communist bastards did the dirty work.
Interestingly, the number of Russians residing in the Czech Republic is way bigger now than before 1990. Nowadays, however, they are mostly businessmen and their families. Not mostly the “mafia” characters, but normal people. I once dated a Russian girl. She was pretty hot even though she came from Siberia. We never talked politics 🙂
It’s easy to enjoy yourself in a corrupt environment as long as you play the game. Beware the iron fist in that velvet glove; aprapos the events we are talking about here.
Can’t disagree with that. As in many authoritarian tin-pot regimes, living there can be fun provided you know the rules of the game, don’t cross the wrong people, and keep hold of your British passport.
Pavel,
Of course the Russian soldiers would not do that. It’s the Czech leaders who got their marching orders from Moscow, the Russian soldiers were kept there so those Czechs leaders wouldn’t get wrong ideas. A pretty effective arrangement.
Russ,
She noticed. She was afraid, but what could she do ? She just carried on with her life as long as she could, and thanked god that they haven’t yet taken her house away. Maybe she even had some cousin in the Party who helped her keep her home… That’s how it worked; she, of course, wouldn’t boast about that cousin.
Jacob,
This might be apocryphal but here goes anyway…
One of Stalin’s secretaries coveted her neighbour’s flat. So, when she was typing up the list of folk to round up for the gulag she stuck her neighbours name on the list and nobody noticed (these lists tended to be quite long). Neighbour gets arrested, flat becomes available and guess who the first person to apply is?
Nick M,
Yeah. Soljenitzyn tells (in Cancer Ward) the story of the “personnel” (i.e. KGB) man at an enterprise, who lived in a shared flat with another family (as flats were scarce). He denounces, annonymously, his neighbor, who is sent to the Gulag, and “personnel” gets the whole flat for himself. Routine procedure.
On the other hand, if you had a cousin in the Party, or could bribe the local Party boys, you were pretty secure in you property rights, that is in those meagre properties that were allowed (one half flat per family, or so).
Besides this, everyday life was quite normal…. if you kept your mouth tight shut.