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    Jan Palach

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    Nare Balyan
    Jan Palach, a Czech student, set himself on fire in Prague's Wenceslas Square in January 1969 to protest the Soviet invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia. He survived for three days but died from his severe burns. Exactly 20 years later in January 1989, thousands gathered in Wenceslas Square to commemorate Palach and protest the ongoing Soviet rule, launching what became known as the Velvet Revolution. Mass protests and strikes continued throughout 1989, and the Communist government announced in November they would cede power, ending over 40 years of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia through mostly peaceful demonstrations.

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    Jan Palach

    Uploaded by

    Nare Balyan
    169 views3 pages
    Jan Palach, a Czech student, set himself on fire in Prague's Wenceslas Square in January 1969 to protest the Soviet invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia. He survived for three days but died from his severe burns. Exactly 20 years later in January 1989, thousands gathered in Wenceslas Square to commemorate Palach and protest the ongoing Soviet rule, launching what became known as the Velvet Revolution. Mass protests and strikes continued throughout 1989, and the Communist government announced in November they would cede power, ending over 40 years of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia through mostly peaceful demonstrations.

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    Jan Palach, a Czech student, set himself on fire in Prague's Wenceslas Square in January 1969 to protest the Soviet invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia. He survived for three days but died from his severe burns. Exactly 20 years later in January 1989, thousands gathered in Wenceslas Square to commemorate Palach and protest the ongoing Soviet rule, launching what became known as the Velvet Revolution. Mass protests and strikes continued throughout 1989, and the Communist government announced in November they would cede power, ending over 40 years of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia through mostly peaceful demonstrations.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    169 views3 pages

    Jan Palach

    Uploaded by

    Nare Balyan
    Jan Palach, a Czech student, set himself on fire in Prague's Wenceslas Square in January 1969 to protest the Soviet invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia. He survived for three days but died from his severe burns. Exactly 20 years later in January 1989, thousands gathered in Wenceslas Square to commemorate Palach and protest the ongoing Soviet rule, launching what became known as the Velvet Revolution. Mass protests and strikes continued throughout 1989, and the Communist government announced in November they would cede power, ending over 40 years of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia through mostly peaceful demonstrations.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 3

    Jan Palach

    The following January, Jan Palach , a Charles University student in


    Prague, entered a suicide pact with several fellow students.
    They were determined to protest the Soviet invasion and combat
    growing despondency among citizens after the takeover.

    On Jan. 16, 1969, Palach climbed the steps of the National


    Museum near the bustling train station on the edge of Wenceslas
    Square. There he doused himself with gasoline and lit a match .
    In his suicide note he signed his name as “Torch Number 1” —
    suggesting more self-immolation and protests to come. (Jan
    Zadjic became “Torch Number 2”; though he couldn’t be directly
    linked to the original pact, Zadjic participated  in group hunger-
    strike after Palach’s death and was part of the resistance.)
    Palach lived for three days in a hospital after sustaining burns to
    85% of his body. Amazingly, he still managed to give interviews.
    He spoke softly , his voice rough and halting.

    When asked why he had done what he did, Palach replied that
    he wanted to voice opposition to the Soviet invasion and “make
    people wake up.” He died three days later.

    The Velvet Revolution

    In the decades that followed, Communist rule in Czechoslovakia


    continued, and the resistance, although forced underground,
    continued to grow too. By 1989, intermittent uprisings
    throughout Warsaw Pact countries, the increasing militarism of
    Soviet governments across the region and slowing economic
    growth within the Eastern Bloc set the stage for revolution.
    In neighboring Poland, Lech Walesa , Anna Walentynowicz and
    workers of Lenin Shipyards in the Polish city of Gdańsk founded
    the Polish trade union Solidarność — Solidarity. Strikes and non-
    violent civil disobedience tactics employed by Solidarity
    paralyzed Baltic seaports. Ultimately, former Soviet leader
    Mikhail Gorbachev later said , it was the catastrophic 1986
    nuclear accident at Chernobyl that sounded the death knell of
    the USSR: as word of the disaster spread, the human cost —
    already horrific — grew, and the once-content Soviet public no
    longer believed their government infallible. There was no going
    back.

    In January 1989 , 20 years after Jan Palach’s death, the


    clandestine resistance movement formed after the Soviets
    crushed the promise of Prague Spring planned what they dubbed
    “Palach Week.” For the first time since Palach’s self-immolation,
    they would go to the place where he fell in Wenceslas Square for
    as public memorial and protest against the ongoing Soviet
    occupation. Nearly 5,000 people came out the first evening of
    that week — an unthinkable number since the Prague Spring. It
    set the stage for what became known as the Velvet Revolution.

    That autumn, after a simmering year of protests and the fall of


    the Berlin Wall , students organized another protest. They
    chose Nov. 17 , the 50-year anniversary of the killings of Prague
    students  by invading Nazi troops.

    The English phrase “Velvet Revolution,” which the European


    Parliament Directorate-General for Translation credits  to Czech
    dissident Rita Klímová, signifies the idea that the revolution was
    brought about without violence — even though the larger
    process was not always peaceful. Soldiers beat protesters, used
    water cannons on the crowd and made numerous arrests. A
    writer named Vaclav Havel was arrested that night. In 1968,
    Havel had been in Liberec, a small town outside the capital,
    when Soviet tanks rolled into his native Prague. Before the
    regime was able to shut down Liberec’s radio
    station,  Havel broadcast several speeches  advising fellow
    citizens to engage peacefully but be prepared to defend
    themselves, encouraging them to remain loyal to the liberal
    ideals of the Spring and to resist and persist. So by the time the
    protests began in 1989 he was a well-known dissident turned
    leader of a coalition of opposition movements, the Civic Forum.

    But when the government-controlled newspaper Rudé


    Právo tried to paint the jailed Havel as a symbol of a supposedly
    failed freedom movement, it backfired tremendously. By Nov.
    28, after constant protests and workers’ strikes, the
    Communists announced  they would cede power, and the
    parliament then removed the one-party provision from the
    constitution.

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