Following the revolution of November 17, 1989, Prague was suffused with enthusiasm. Today the mood is different; with no one knowing what the economic future may bring, insecurity prevails. The specter of unemployment and inflation looms over a land where there is immense pressure for change and the rules for everything are in flux. A certain pessimism is gaining in a beautiful country where only a year ago everybody was smiling about almost everything. Freedom, once a chimera, now a reality, is revealing a complex face.
At its outset, the Czechoslovak revolution differed in quality from the other uprisings in the rest of Eastern Europe. Called the Velvet Revolution, it contained an element of forgiveness, of national reconciliation. One English journalist marveled, "Look, a revolution where not even one window pane was broken." The Communist Party was not stripped of its riches. The communists were not tried and punished. One year later, however, the government moved to confiscate without compensation the party's properties (evaluated at $250 million). Crowds in the streets were calling for banning of the party and prosecution of its leaders.
In November 1989, and in the following months, everything had looked rosy. The theaters were filled, as were the streets, with a euphoric population. The country, which had been devastated under communist rule, still seemed rich. Czechoslovakia had been one of the ten most industrialized nations in the world, even after two world wars. It still seemed more prosperous than at least a hundred other countries.
Artists were, and still are, the best gauge of the contemporary state of mind of the nation. Dissidents, particularly dissident artists, have for decades been the ones to shatter the seemingly impregnable monolithic structure of communism, perhaps the most decadent and corrupt system in the world. In late 1989 Communism feel like a house of cards in Europe. But in the space created by its downfall lies a great unknown: the future.
In Czechoslovakia the arts express the country's most eloquent and understandable language at present. Writers, actors, painters, poets, playwrights, and the rest are the living barometer of the mood, hopes, and fears of the Czechoslovak people.
Why artists and the arts? In the first place, it was writers and playwrights who became the conscience of the land and its people, just as they once had in the past. This was not just by accident. At the very center of Europe, the territories of what now form Czechoslovakia were encircled by three formidable powers (Germany, Austria, and Russia) who for hundreds of years strove to conquer and adsorb them. Czech language and culture were slowly dying out over the span of many years until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Writers and other artists were the ones who resurrected and liberated the soul of the Czech people. Literature, painting, and music helped define and revive an almost extinct culture. Many names of the past such as Karel Havlicek Borovsky, Josef Manes, Mikolas Ales, Bedrich Smetana, Antonin Dvorak and others are enshrined in the memory of the people; they have always expected such commitment from their artists. In any hour of danger, artists stood with their nation. With its soul almost absorbed by its enemies, arts and artists became the people's last hope.
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