1. Modern Revolutions in Comparative Perspective
Jan Plamper

2. Week 17: The Velvet Revolutions
Introduction
Causes
Course
Outcomes

3. (1) Introduction
Term ‘Velvet Revolution’ from Czechoslovakia where Communist Party renounced monopoly after mass demonstrations in Nov.-Dec. 1989

4. (1) Introduction
 Velvet Revolution = non-violent transition from Communist Party dictatorship with planned socialist economy to democratic republic with market economy

5. (1) Introduction
Chronology Czech Velvet Rev Nov.: 1 day before International Students Day, students demonstrate peacefully in Bratislava ( official holiday subverted) 17 Nov.: mass demonstrations in Prague, anti-Comm. slogans chanted, hoax of dead student (= trigger?)

6. (1) Introduction 18 Nov.: student strike 19 Nov. onwards:
strikes and protests widen; at first, demands = modest: change members of gov’t (use non-compromised socialists)
tv workers demand coverage of demonstrations, which then widen further
Civic Forum as umbrella organisation for protesters; dissident Václav Havel as leader

7. Prague, between Nov. 1989

8. (1) Introduction
Václav Havel ( ) in 1978 (explaining human rights violations after suppression of Charter 77 dissident group) and in 1989

9. (1) Introduction
late Nov.: gov’t resigns, censorship eased, way paved for multiparty democracy 29 Dec.: Havel elected new President June 1990: free elections Dec. 1992: dissolution of Czechoslovakia: Czech Republic; Slovakia

10. (1) Introduction
But was the transition everywhere as peaceful as in Czechoslovakia? Is the title of today’s lecture, ‘The Velvet Revolutions’, appropriate?

11. (1) Introduction
Romania Death toll protesters: circa 1,100

12. (1) Introduction
Cult of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu

13. (1) Introduction
Execution of Ceauşescus, 25 Dec. 1989

14. (1) Introduction
Pro ‘Velvet Revolutions’: violence and dislocation associated with dissolution of one of two superpowers (Soviet Bloc) small when imagining what could have been

15. (1) Introduction
Clampdown as an option. Beijing, Tiananmen Square massacre, June 1989.

16. (1) Introduction
Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, 26 April 1986 … now imagine Eastern European nuclear power plants in violent revolutions or civil war…

17. (2) Causes
Question of causes = deeply politicised And linked with grand narratives…

18. (2) Causes
…Western Cold War triumphalist narrative: revolutions across Soviet bloc were bound to happen because of economic and ultimately moral inferiority of communism

19. (2) Causes
…civil society narrative: regardless of economic system, Soviet-style societies suppress innate human freedoms  fight for democracy, embodied first by dissidents, later by larger segments of population (= civil society) top: Adam Michnik in prison, 1982 bottom: Michnik with Lech Wałęsa in 1989

20. (2) Causes
Natalya Gorbanevskaya ( ) dissident who protested 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia

21. (2) Causes
…uncivil society narrative: Eastern European/Russian Revolutions of happened not because of anyone’s (dissidents’, civil society’s) strength, but because of elites’ and system’s weaknesses

22. (2) Causes
Nonetheless, let us try to at least list the causes as neutrally as possible, without weighting them

23. (2) Causes: (a) (geo)political
1985: Gorbachev comes to power in Soviet Union and starts reforming  ‘If the necessity for [reforms] comes in troubled times, you are too late for harsh measures; and mild ones will not help you’ (Machiavelli)

24. (2) Causes: (b) economic
planned economies have difficulty making transition from industrial/Fordist system to post-industrial/post-Fordist system
from 1970s onwards: debts in West
consumerism: East lagged behind West, but East saw higher standard of living on Western tv etc.

25. (2) Causes: (b) economic
Robotron Computer, GDR, 1986
Apple Macintosh Plus, 1986

26. (2) Causes: (c) military
Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), ‘Star Wars’, 1983

27. (2) Causes: (c) military
Reagan’s SDI

28. (2) Causes: (d) environmental
Chemical plant of Bitterfeld, GDR, 1989

29. (2) Causes: (d) environmental
Bitterfeld, the city, 1989

30. (2) Causes: (e) alternative belief systems
e.g. Catholicism in Poland, John Paul II = 1st Polish Pope, elected 1978

31. (2) Causes
Pope visited his native Poland in 1979, 1983, 1987, June and Aug Here shown with Wałęsa in 1987

32. (3) Course
Different for each country, but some commonalities:
alternative spaces where (small) groups of people had been meeting and started imagining different politics: e.g. churches

33. (3) Course protest widens over some cause or trigger
gov’t does not choose ‘Chinese solution’ (clampdown) because of USSR’s soft line (Gorbachev). If it chooses Chinese solution, police et al. start fraternising with protesters

34. (3) Course
new gov’ts formed with civil society participation; free elections announced
all Eastern European countries interconnected, watching each other. China as horror scenario also looms large

35. (4) Outcomes
Ironic, cynical narrative: Old elites stay in power, adapt to capitalism and democracy. Old dissidents live on tiny pensions.

36. (4) Outcomes
European triumphalist narrative: Eastern European brothers and sisters finally return to their natural European home

37. (4) Outcomes
Turning of tables (for brief moment, intellectuals and counterculture on top) narrative: Czech band Plastic People of the Universe (founded 1968) (22:00)

38. (4) Outcomes
Turning of tables (for brief moment, intellectuals and counterculture on top) narrative: Frank Zappa in Prague, 1990  Havel made Zappa cultural attaché of Czech Republic