Velvet Revolution
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Velvet Revolution
The Velvet Revolution ( cs, Sametová revoluce) or Gentle Revolution ( sk, Nežná revolúcia) was a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from 17 November to 28 November 1989. Popular demonstrations against the one-party government of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia included students and older dissidents. The result was the end of 41 years of one-party rule in Czechoslovakia, and the subsequent dismantling of the command economy and conversion to a parliamentary republic. On 17 November 1989 (International Students' Day), riot police suppressed a student demonstration in Prague. The event marked the 50th anniversary of a violently suppressed demonstration against the Nazi storming of Prague University in 1939 where 1,200 students were arrested and 9 killed (see Origin of International Students' Day). The 1989 event sparked a series of demonstrations from 17 November to late December and turned into an anti-communist demonstration. ...
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Revolutions Of 1989
The Revolutions of 1989, also known as the Fall of Communism, was a revolutionary wave that resulted in the end of most communist states in the world. Sometimes this revolutionary wave is also called the Fall of Nations or the Autumn of Nations, a play on the term Spring of Nations that is sometimes used to describe the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe. It also led to the eventual breakup of the Soviet Union—the world's largest communist state—and the abandonment of communist regimes in many parts of the world, some of which were violently overthrown. The events, especially the fall of the Soviet Union, drastically altered the world's balance of power, marking the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the post-Cold War era. The earliest recorded protests were started in Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union, in 1986 with the Jeltoqsan, student demonstrations — the last chapter of these revolutions is considered to be in 1993 when Cambodia United Nations Transition ...
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Communist Party Of Czechoslovakia
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Czech and Slovak: ''Komunistická strana Československa'', KSČ) was a communist and Marxist–Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992. It was a member of the Comintern. Between 1929 and 1953, it was led by Klement Gottwald. The KSČ was the sole governing party in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic though it was a leading party along with the Slovak branch and four other legally permitted non-communist parties. After its election victory in 1946, it seized power in the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état and established a one-party state allied with the Soviet Union. Nationalization of virtually all private enterprises followed, and a command economy was implemented. The KSČ was committed to the pursuit of communism, and after Joseph Stalin's rise to power Marxism–Leninism became formalized as the party's guiding ideology and would remain so throughout the rest of its existence. Consequently, party ...
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Civic Forum
The Civic Forum (Czech: ''Občanské fórum'', OF) was a political movement in the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, established during the Velvet Revolution in 1989. The corresponding movement in Slovakia was called Public Against Violence ( Slovak: ''Verejnosť proti násiliu'' - VPN). The Civic Forum's purpose was to unify the dissident forces in Czechoslovakia and to overthrow the Communist regime. In this, they succeeded when the Communists gave up power in November 1989 after only 10 days of protests. Playwright Václav Havel, its leader and founder, was elected president on December 29, 1989. Although the Forum did not have a clear political strategy beyond the June 1990 elections, it campaigned successfully in March and April 1990 during the first free elections in Czechoslovakia since 1946. Those elections garnered Civic Forum 36 percent of the vote, the highest that a Czechoslovakian party ever obtained in a free election. This netted it 68 seats in the Chamber of Deputie ...
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Public Security (Czechoslovakia)
Public Security ( cs, Veřejná bezpečnost B sk, Verejná bezpečnosť B was the regular police force of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (ČSSR), created in 1945 as a branch of the National Security Corps (), which also included State Security (), Armed Airport Security ()) and Armed Railway Security, (). History When the Czech Police was established on July 15, 1991, the VB was used as the basis of reforming the force under Act 283/1991 Coll. Organization The VB was divided into the Public Order and Traffic VB (Highway Patrol), Criminal Investigations VB (major crimes, forensics) and an Infrastructure Security section (security of important buildings, installations, etc.). There were regional, district, city and local detachments of the force. Its given wartime mission scenarios incklude rear security operations and security of POW facilities. The VB were permitted to demand from any citizen an identification booklet (). This booklet contained a photograph and in ...
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Sbor Národní Bezpečnosti
The National Security Corps ( cz, Sbor národní bezpečnosti; SNB; sk, Zbor národnej bezpečnosti; ZNB) was the national police in Czechoslovakia from 1945 to 1991. History At the end of World War II, on April 4, 1945, Edvard Beneš headed the first postwar government at Košice, dominated by the three socialist parties, including the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). The SNB was established by the coalition government as part of the Ministry of the Interior during a meeting in Košice on April 17, replacing the traditional police and gendarmes. The KSČ gained control of the Ministry of Interior when Václav Nosek was appointed minister and began converting the security forces into arms of the party. Between 1945 and 1948, anti-Communist police officials and officers were fired, non-Communist personnel were encouraged to join the KSČ, and all were subjected to Communist indoctrination. Nosek's replacement of the upper police hierarchy with Communists caused the pro ...
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People's Militias (Czechoslovakia)
People's Militias (in Slovak ''Ľudové milície'', in Czech ''Lidové milice''), also called The Armed Fist of the Working Class (in Slovak ''Ozbrojená päsť robotníckej triedy'', in Czech ''Ozbrojená pěst dělnické třídy'') was a militia organisation of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1989.People's Mlitias, 21 February coup d'etat (Czech)
Moderní dějiny.cz (6 March 2012)


History

The predecessor of militias were armed groups of factory workers (''Závodní milice'', factory militias) formed in June 1945 to protect the factories during the chaos. In 1946 they were renamed ''Závodn ...
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Government Of Czechoslovakia
The government of Czechoslovakia under Marxism–Leninism was in theory a dictatorship of the proletariat. In practice, it was a one-party dictatorship run by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the KSC. In the 1970s and 1980s the government structure was based on the amended 1960 Constitution of Czechoslovakia, which defined the country as the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. The Constitutional Act on the Czechoslovak Federation (1968) transformed the country into a federal state and stipulated the creation of two constituent republics, with separate government structures for the Czech Socialist Republic, located in Prague, and the Slovak Socialist Republic, situated in Bratislava. These republic governments shared responsibility with the federal government in areas such as planning, finance, currency, price control, agriculture and food, transportation, labor, wages, social policy, and the media. The central government, located in Prague, had exclusive jurisdiction over fo ...
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State-owned Company
A state-owned enterprise (SOE) is a Government, government entity which is established or nationalised by the ''national government'' or ''provincial government'' by an executive order or an act of legislation in order to earn Profit (economics), profit for the Government, government, control monopoly of the Private sector, private sector entities, provide products and services to citizens at a lower price and for the achievement of overall financial goals & developmental objectives in a particular country. The national government or provincial government has majority ownership over these ''state owned enterprises''. These ''state owned enterprises'' are also known as public sector undertakings in some countries. Defining characteristics of SOEs are their distinct legal form and possession of Profit (economics), financial goals & developmental objectives (e.g., a state railway company may aim to make transportation more accessible and earn profit for the government), SOEs ar ...
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Privatization
Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when a heavily regulated private company or industry becomes less regulated. Government functions and services may also be privatised (which may also be known as "franchising" or "out-sourcing"); in this case, private entities are tasked with the implementation of government programs or performance of government services that had previously been the purview of state-run agencies. Some examples include revenue collection, law enforcement, water supply, and prison management. Another definition is that privatization is the sale of a state-owned enterprise or municipally owned corporation to private investors; in this case shares may be traded in the public market for the first time, or for the first time since an enterprise's previous nationaliz ...
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Command Economy
A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, participatory or Soviet-type forms of economic planning. The level of centralization or decentralization in decision-making and participation depends on the specific type of planning mechanism employed. Socialist states based on the Soviet model have used central planning, although a minority such as the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia have adopted some degree of market socialism. Market abolitionist socialism replaces factor markets with direct calculation as the means to coordinate the activities of the various socially-owned economic enterprises that make up the economy. More recent approaches to socialist planning and allocation have come from some economists and computer scientists proposing planning mechanisms based on ...
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Dissolution Of Czechoslovakia
The dissolution of Czechoslovakia ( cs, Rozdělení Československa, sk, Rozdelenie Česko-Slovenska) took effect on December 31, 1992, and was the self-determined split of the federal republic of Czechoslovakia into the independent countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Both mirrored the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic, which had been created in 1969 as the constituent states of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic until the end of 1989. It is sometimes known as the Velvet Divorce, a reference to the bloodless Velvet Revolution of 1989, which had led to the end of the rule of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Background Czechoslovakia was created with the dissolution of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I. In 1918, a meeting took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, at which the future Czechoslovak President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and other Czech and Slovak representatives signed the Pittsburgh Agreement, which prom ...
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1990 Czechoslovak Parliamentary Election
Federal elections were held in Czechoslovakia on 8 and 9 June 1990,Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p471 alongside elections for the Czech and Slovak Assemblies.Nohlen & Stöver, p472 They were the first elections held in the country since the Velvet Revolution seven months earlier. Voter turnout was 96.2%. The movement led by President Václav Havel emerged as the largest bloc, with majorities in both houses of parliament–something that no Czechoslovak party or alliance had previously achieved in a free election. The Czech wing, Civic Forum (OF), won 68 of the 150 seats in the House of the People and 50 of the 150 seats in the House of Nations, whilst its Slovak counterpart, Public Against Violence (VPN), won 19 seats in the House of the People and 33 in the House of Nations.Kamm, HenryNow, the Czech Reality; Political 'Amateurs,' After Free Elections, Turn to Problems Left by the Communists The New York Times, 1990-06-11. The Com ...
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