From the archives: Force Behind Prague Change: ‘Lazy’ Students

PRAGUE, Czechoslovakia -- The night was waiting to become history. Monika Pajerova felt a surge of hope as she looked out over the crowd.

There were thousands of them! The flickering candles they held illuminated their young faces, and in their smiles, Monika was certain she saw joy.

“I thought that something--I didn’t know what, but something--was beginning right then,” the 23-year-old philosophy student recalled.

It turned out to be a revolution.

What began as a spontaneous protest by frustrated students exploded into a bloody confrontation that Nov. 17 when police turned on the throng with truncheons and attack dogs.

Within hours, the students’ shock coalesced into a highly organized and well-supported national movement.

And within days, they rendered one of Eastern Europe’s last oppressive Communist regimes virtually impotent.

Although center stage has since been yielded to more seasoned players, the young students who started Czechoslovakia’s quicksilver revolution remain its driving force.

Prominent actors accompany the students to farms and factories, where they spread their message of democratic reform. Luxury hotels send hot soup to the command center at ancient Charles University. Strangers pat students on the back in the street. Colleges from Stockholm to Ft. Collins, Colo., fax them congratulatory messages.

“Before, we were considered lazy kids, just the cheeky children of prominent parents, since it took money and connections to even get into college,” said Roman Rehak, a 22-year-old student spokesman majoring in physical education and English.

“Now, it’s like society has adopted us. We’re everybody’s pets.”

The transformation began the night of Nov. 17.

Monika Pajerova was among the 10 students who organized the rally to celebrate the International Day of Students.

It had taken months to get permission from Communist officials to march from the university to Vyshred Cemetery to honor Jan Opletal, a student killed 50 years earlier for resisting the Nazis.

A request to gather in Wencelas Square, the heart of Prague, was denied.

By the time the big day came, political reform was sweeping Eastern Europe.

But Czechoslovakia stood still, the Soviet-led invasion that crushed the 1968 “Prague Spring” of liberalization still fresh in memory.

“Most of the teachers support us,” said Roman Rehak, “but many of them who say this is great ask us what we’re going to do when the tanks come.”

The students’ frustration with the Communist regime had been simmering for some time.

Many say they particularly resented the emphasis on Marxism and Leninism--and the repression of other political theories--in their curriculum.

Besides the two hours of Marxist-Leninist classes each week, there were the countless ways it was slipped into non-related courses, like an ideological mickey.

“Even P.E.,” Rehak recalled. “There was a class called the Theory of Physical Culture.”

The students debated with trusted teachers. If this system was ideal, Rehak remembered them demanding in one class, then why was the standard of living at least three times higher in capitalist countries?

“Keeping living standards low keeps people revolutionary,” the professor responded.

“There was a deep anger within everyone,” Rehak said. “This one old teacher, I hated her, she would end every lecture saying ‘I believe you, but I have a study plan I must fulfill.’ ”

The government was even worse, he thought.

“They had been promising economic reforms for three years, but they were empty promises,” he complained. “We were being lied to all the time.”

But these children of the 1968 generation always felt there was a double life in Czechoslovakia.

“At school or official places, you behaved differently than at home,” said Simona Vrecknoya, a 22-year-old law student.

“At school, they would say certain things, like our country is very developed and we have a successful economy. When you repeated that at home, your parents would tell you it’s a lie but that you must pretend it’s true.”

On Nov. 17, more than 10,000 students stopped pretending.

As the sanctioned demonstration drew to a close that night, there was an almost palpable shift in the young crowd’s mood.

“In our hearts, some of us knew we still wanted to go to Wencelas Square,” said Pajerova.

Environmentalists and others had attempted much smaller demonstrations at Wencelas Square before. Authorities quickly crushed them.

“But this time, there was a feeling that there were just so many of us, and that we were really together,” Pajerova said.

“There was something in society we just couldn’t bear any longer, and we saw that change was possible.

“We felt so proud, so strong, that this time, we could make it.”

Simona Vrecknoya felt it, too.

“It was like we had one soul,” she said.

After they were beaten back, clusters of students who escaped arrest or serious injury began meeting that night in cafes and youth hostels.

“By chance, a bunch of us drifted to the same cafe, one where we always went,” Pajerova recalled.

They decided to go on strike. The revolution was set in motion.

“Everybody knew something would change after Poland, Hungary and East Germany,” said Vit Chalupa, a 21-year-old physical education major.

“I knew I was at the threshold of something crucial.”

That first night, Pajerova and about 10 friends left the cafe and fanned out to knock on classmates’ doors. Soon there were 20 more.

Everyone began phoning friends. Messengers delivered notes to people without phones. Nobody knew how many people had been hurt or jailed, but rumors flew that a demonstrator had been beaten to death by police.

The next evening, a Saturday, more than 200 people showed up for a strategy session. Such a gathering was illegal.

Twenty representatives were quickly chosen for a strike committee. A thinner group would lessen the chances of discovery by the secret police.

Each coordinator had two understudies, who would avoid open participation in the movement and be ready to move in and keep the machine running in case the first team was arrested.

More secret meetings were held Sunday to spread the word. Teachers and deans who were invited were supportive but nervous. Remember 1968, they warned.

“I can understand their fear,” said Simona Vrecknoya, “but we were just babies or not even born then, so we don’t know this fear ourselves. And we wanted change.”

On the 20th, a Monday morning, 20-student battalions blocked the doors to each of the 10 colleges at Charles University. “We’re on strike,” they announced. No one resisted; thousands asked to help.

Inside the 650-year-old halls, something akin to a protest factory was running at a frenetic pace.

“We had to do the best we could as quickly as possible, because we knew they might come for us at any minute,” said Pajerova.

Students pecked away at typewriters, drawing up the list of demands. They wanted an investigation of Friday night’s police attack. They wanted a slew of Communist leaders sacked and the party stripped of its monopoly. They wanted free elections. They wanted amnesty for the artists and intellectuals exiled after the Prague Spring.

By chance, students from the film academy had been videotaping Friday night’s demonstration for an assignment.

Now they worked through the night making copies of the tapes. People went to the Austrian and West German borders to tape Western television news accounts of the brutality. Czechoslovakia’s state-run media reported that the students had attacked police for no reason.

The students taped posters and leaflets explaining their stand on Prague’s old stone walls and in shop windows.

The secret police were putting up posters, too--supposed calls by the students to “hang all Commies” and stage a violent coup.

The students and their supporters tore them down.

If they slept at all, the students huddled beneath blankets on classroom floors or flopped on exercise mats in the gym.

“On Monday, we thought it was fun to be rebels, but by Tuesday, it was getting more serious,” Rehak said. “We found out it was hard work.”

The degree of public support for the students quickly became visible that week as peaceful demonstrations called by the students drew up to half a million people.

“Suddenly, they saw somebody who wasn’t afraid,” Rehak said. “It was like an avalanche, the way more people just kept getting on.

“People were passing around plastic bags and just filling them with money to support us,” he added, noting that his College of Arts alone had collected 120,000 kroner, the equivalent of about $12,000.

The highly respected National Theatre Academy announced its support that first day. Players interrupted an important ice hockey match so students could read their demands to the fans. Underground rock groups loaned their prized amplifiers for rallies and demonstrations. Luxury hotels sent over hot soup. Friends of friends of friends appeared to fix overworked copying machines. There were always cakes and pastries.

It is the kind of revolution mothers bake goodies for.

Language students set up a multilingual interpreter service for the hordes of Western journalists who descended on Prague. Law students began running a 24-hour legal aid clinic for protesters. Athletes formed an unarmed patrol to guard the doors.

The students opened a bank account, though no one seems to know yet how much money has poured in or what it all will be used for.

Rehak thinks the physical education department may get some cash to fix a faulty pool filter, and he hopes enough is left over “to throw ourselves a big party.”

The students pledged not to drink or celebrate their victories until a new government is in place.

Still nervous but no longer fearing police or military action, they have settled into a disciplined routine.

Each day, a dozen or more teams fan out across the country, usually four to a car, usually a car borrowed from a parent.

Sometimes, workers or townspeople send a driver to Prague and ask that a delegation be sent back.

“We try to always take a famous TV actor because people recognize and respect them,” Rehak said.

They carry stacks of leaflets and copies of the Nov. 17 videotape. Often, they are barred from factories by local party militias, or detained for hours by local police.

Everyone must sign out of the university before making such a trip, noting their destination, expected time of return and mode of transport, including car license numbers.

Law students advise workers of little-known rights in an attempt to revitalize the country’s trade unions.

Visiting factories and state enterprises, they urge workers to oust Communist-appointed managers and elect new ones interested in fighting for healthier conditions, better wages and more efficient production.

“In the Slovak Republic and other areas, especially rural ones, people are not yet activated,” Vrecknoya said. “Right now, we’re concentrating on smaller towns where Communist Party committees are still very strong.”

The students are careful not to promise any miracles.

“Some people think it’s going to be paradise by June,” said Rehak.

Vrecknoya is worried, too.

“We don’t want to destroy the Communist Party,” she said. “I joined myself just two months ago. We want to make it really work. Too few people got too much power.