Czechoslovakia and its history
Greetings to all my readers!
Last month I wrote to you (I mean on the blog) about the Velvet Revolution. Last week I was given a great opportunity. But for this opportunity, I needed to do some research about Czech history. Then in Czechoslovakia, there were another two interesting periods from history - Normalization and disintegration of Czechoslovakia. These two periods related to the Velvet Revolution. We call normalization the period before the Velvet Revolution and the Disintegration of Czechoslovakia was a consequence of the Velvet Revolution.
Normalization
Normalization describes the period of the 1970s and 1980s when the Soviet troops occupied Czechoslovakia. By 1968 the troops of smaller states had gone, but the Soviet ones remained and more and more interfered in the internal affairs of the Czechoslovak state. In 1968, there was also a federation of two states - the Czech Socialist Republic (ČSR) and the Slovak Socialist Republic (SSR).
The development of Czechoslovakia was not without protests and demonstrations. These protests resulted in an act by Jan Palach, a student of the Faculty of Medicine of Charles University, who, in a protest in 1969 on Wenceslas Square, spilled flammable liquid on himself. He succumbed to the consequences a few days later.
The situation escalated in the accession of Gustav Husak to the post of secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and later he also began the Czechoslovak president. Under his leadership and the leadership of the Communist Party, changes occurred in Czechoslovakia. The economy was centrally planned. There were only selected commodities in the stores, and these commodities were practically divided between people. It was followed by supervising everyone at the Communist Party, but also by supervising ordinary people. Those who did not comply with the regime were persecuted, fired from work, kicked out of school... Not only those who disagreed with the regime were persecuted, but also their loved ones. The most well-known people who made it public - artists, politicians, journalists, were called dissidents.
It is also good to mention one cultural thing that Czechoslovakia and its regime showed the world how active our nation is. Spartakiáda - a synchronized public exercise in physical education.
The most venerable act of dissidents (dissident = person with a different mind) was the publication of Charter 77 (1977) - Charta 77, bringing together important figures who were not afraid to speak publicly and who were against the totalitarian regime.
2. Disintegration of Czechoslovakia
In 1990, the Slovak Ministry of Foreign Relations was established and Milan Kňažko was appointed as its head after the 1992 elections. These elections and the establishment of the Ministry led to speculation about the division of Czechoslovakia. In 1992, the Ministry of International Relations of the Czech Republic was also headed by Josef Zieleniec. Not surprisingly, on January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia was finally divided into two independent states.
While in the other states that divided during the 1990s, the division of the federation into two self-sufficient entities - the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic - took place without any problems, nonviolently, by agreement.
Main information from:
https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartakiáda
https://www.dejepis.com/ucebnice/normalizace-v-ceskoslovensku-70-leta/
https://www.pametnaroda.cz/cs/sametova-revoluce-v-ceskoslovensku
https://www.mzv.cz/jnp/cz/o_ministerstvu/historie_a_osobnosti_ceske_diplomacie/leden_1993_rozpad_ceskoslovenska_a_vznik.html