Dějiny před očima: sametová revoluce jako "work in progress"
History before our eyes: the Velvet Revolution as a work in progress

Author(s): Jiří Suk
Subject(s): History, Post-War period (1950 - 1989), Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), History of Communism
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: Velvet Revolution; history; communism; 80s; 90s;
Summary/Abstract: The fall of the communist regime in November 1989 had a major impact on my decision to move away from subjects which had interested me as a student of history at Prague’s Faculty of Arts from 1986-1992. I left the Early Modern Age (the Estates’ Uprising) and the turn of the 20th century (a dissertation on the Goll school and a fascination with the fin de siècle) for contemporary history, which had been newly established in 1990. The generation of ‘Normalization’ children, which I belong to, had never experienced living history as a wide-ranging political drama, and then suddenly it was upon us like a gust from the mountains. Like many people of my age, I began to search for a comprehensive explanation for the Czechoslovak traumas which, during my adolescence spent in an average housing-estate family, I absorbed in the form of disquieting fragments - Horáková, Slánský, Dubček, 1968 invasion, Palach, Charter 77, Havel.

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