Albertov is a district in the center city, where mainly schools of medicine, sciences and nursing are located.

Vysehrad is a site of ancient castle that was the seat of the Przemyslid dynasty before 1000 AD. Now it’s in ruins. The national cemetery (our version of Arlington) is located there.

Manes is a functionalist-style building at Nabrezi hanging over the Vltava river, close to the Narodni Trida. It used to be an art center; also a gallery is located there.

Narodni Trida [Avenue of the Nation] is a wide art-nouveau boulevard in the very center of Prague, leading to Vaclavske sq.

Narodni Divadlo [The National Theatre] is one of the most important national symbols for the Czechs. It was built as the center of Czech theatre in late 19th century from contributions of plain people. The "central theatre" mission is a bit controversial today, but the symbolic role still remains very strong.

The Old Town is an ancient disctrict in Prague, the target of most of the turists today. Baroque, Gothic and even Roman buildings are standing in their majesty there.

There are long and mostly wide avenues at the both banks of the Vltava River that divide Prague into two halves and go through the center city. It was another possible way to the Vaclavske Sq., but the demonstration would have to use Narodni trida.

Vysehrad (a 500AD castle) is also a place of the national cemetery, a kind of Czech Arlington.

He was the chairman of the Communist Party central committee, oficially a top function in the state.

Havel is a former dissident who became a kind of representative for all the dissent in the ‘80s. He is the first democratic president. Also note that the name "Vaclav" is one of the most commonly used names (the country saint patron, today's prime-minister, president and many other important figures bear it, too). Finally, it's pronounced 'Vah-tse-luv', not 'Vackluv'.

It’s said to be a favorite song of the first Czechoslovak president Masaryk. He was virtually banned from our history textbooks for being "burgeois“.

It was already dark, so the candles looked pretty good and impressive.

The communism in the former GDR fell down just a few weeks before the Czech November demonstration.

I don’t know why, but this first action is almost never mentioned in official histories of the November 17th. I guess it was just put into shadow by incomparingly more brutal action at Narodni trida. Or may be that just I saw it???

They were also crying "Mame hole ruce" ["We’ve got empty hands“] to let the police know about their non-violent intents. However, this cry sounds like "Mame hole v ruce“ ["We’ve got sticks in our hands"] which was later interpreted by the communist propaganda as a clear sign of violence of the demmonstrators!

A usual police way to tell us they are going to kick our ass soon. However, there WAS a place where to leave at all the previous demonstrations. This time, there was no escape!

Vysehrad was the target of the official rally, whereas Vaclavske namesti (as a usual place of public anti-regime protests) was the forbidden place. The secret police agents who are said to be leading the demonstration led us to Vysehrad at this time.

Well, the numbers in my diary don’t reflect reality since I can’t count people in crowd, of course. They’re just my estimates! I don’t know the official numbers either. So all numbers in my diary just reflect how big I thought that the demonstration was (5000 was a lot of people for me :-))

It could be anyone from the establishment. These people usually spoke in a kind of newspeak, which was a target of many jokes.

The police already started to stop cooperating at this moment. It was the highest time.

Well, it was a terrible look. First three rows were white (riot police helmets), and then there was a green (color of the standard police uniforms) mess behind them. Everyone was armed, of course. What I didn’t see was a "grey mess" behind the green ones: the plain clothed secret police agents, who assisted at every demonstration and were frequently the most brutal.

They were feared special troops that were used to break up demonstrations. They were armed with sticks, helmets and shields. These were frequently supported by another para-military units and technical means of breaking up the demonstrations (e.g., the water or cry-gas cannons).

It was weird, weird! Normally, neighboring streets around the demonstration site were full of police, it was all right. But the whole districts?! It just indicated to us that it was a good step to leave. I was especially happy since I hadn’t told my parents where I went and such a police engagement suggested that I could happen to be out of home for several days (either arrested or driven dozens of miles out of Prague and left without any resources -- a common way to punish demonstrators without any trial).

If I remember well, the sitting demonstrations were invented by the Indians, since the horses of British police refused to walk into sitting people. The communist police was worse than animals, though, and they were beating no matter what the people did.

It should be noted that such a rebellion was almost unprecedented!

The sticks were really made out of wood. This cry was just another example of the power of the crowd hysteria that can be positive as well as negative.

All the previous demonstrations were mostly "static", i.e., they occured on just one place -- a square, most frequently. This one was special since it was a march -- many people in the houses we were passing by probably saw an illegal demonstration for the first time in their life!

Trams are a very popular transportation mean in Prague. Usually they consist of 2 cars.

A cloth ribbon painted in the national colors: blue, red and white. People started wearing them publicly after the anniversary of the Czechoslovak indepence at 10/28/89, when a big demonstration took place. After November, just everyone wore them for as long as one year!

A nickname for the riot police (pointing to the white helmets they wore).

These were special armed troops (hated by everyone, of course) serving as a kind of communist National Guard, intended just for fighting internal resistance. They were created as a support force during the coup in 1948 for the communists (what if there was a kind of resistance at that time, right?) and they were never dissolved after that. Later in the ‘90s, it was found that they were not made legal by any law during the communism. However, none of the militia officers was brought to law. Velvet, yeah.

Vaclavske namesti [Venceslas Square], named after the country's saint patron, is a huge and relatively modern boulevard. Many demonstrations took place there because of its symbolic meaning and capacity to hold a lot of people.

No, he was free, which was kind of strange; he just didn't come to the demonstration. Not many dissidents were involved, anyway. This was not 'their' demonstration, but a student event. They also couldn't get over the 'co-production' of the communist youth union.

Another nickname for the riot police that originates in the white color of their helmets (do you remember the Smurfs had white caps?)

This was one of the nastiest things the police did there. The street was nicknamed "Lane of Death" later, since the brutal terror to which the people were exposed in this torture was enormous.

We haven't seen them before; and because they wore red barets we thought them to be paratroopers. In fact, they were just recently created elite riot police troops (if I remember well). Indeed, their brutality surpassed everyone others' among the police.

Frequently, after the demonstrators were loaded into the police vans, they were driven dozens of miles out of Prague and left without any resources -- a common way to punish them without any trial.

It was "just" a specially modified armed transporter, in fact.

We were full of TV shots from Pinochet's Chile, especially those from brutal breakdown of demonstrations, so often broadcast by our TV.

As we learned later, these young men (looking both primitive and innocent, fanatic and cool-minded) were students of the police academy who had to take missions such as this at times. Young brains were easier to brainwash, I guess, to do everything. I had an acquitance who was in these troops. He really believed that the 'criminal bastards' who were attending the demonstrations deserve a serious lesson. Since he practised karate and taek-won-do frequently, he must have been especially good at that. Oh my God.

I have NEVER seen anyone as moved and shocked as these two girls. I spent a long time with them a couple of days after the demonstration, and they told me things that I simply couldn't put in the diary because we don't have words for them. The description presented here is just a resemblance of that they really felt.
By the way, the girl I'm speaking about in my diary married an American afterwards and moved to the US shortly. Has she lost any hope in the Czech nation after she saw the police action.....?

For long years, the regime was technically distorting the US broadcasting so that we could not hear it. However, in the 1988 they let it go for most of the day and so it became the major source of if not truth, then at least alternative information.

In fact, the police had not used any power since the 11/17.

The Monday on 11/28, not 11/21. All other info is correct. The students were starting to go to theatres on Friday, though; just from the demonstration to interrupt the play and speak about the terror. Some of them were covered with blood...

It's one of things that I am confused about myself from that time. How the heck could I be so sure that the revolution had started?! May be it was my visit at friends who have been at Narodni and my own experience from the previous demonstration? May be it was the unusual noise at the Free Europe or Polish TV? What it was???

I had invented a secret alphabet as a kid. I have been using it since then for writing things that I want none to understand. Thus, a couple of names in this diary were coded in this way.

They did not, but pretended to have killed someone and let one of the dissidents spread the news (they arrested him for this, of course). More about it in my history section.

The secret police chose this person for several reasons, one of them being the fact that there were two people of this name on that school and so the confusion would be bigger. Also,  Martin's family was active in the dissent so it could be an act of revenge or a high political game played on them. His brother had been brutally beaten on another demonstration that took place just a few days before 11/17. None knows the full truth; and Martin, who became one of my  friends later, will never speak about this to anyone.

They were both students who died in their fight against the totalitarian regimes of the Nazis (Opletal) and Russians (Palach). Again, see the history section.

Prague was once proud to have the biggest sculpture of Stalin in the world. It was destroyed with a couple of tons of dynamite at the end of Stalinism in early '60s, but nothing was built up on the site where it was standing . So it became a place of smaller, informal meetings. Today, the gays are finding their one-night partners there...

The whole sentence is full of false rumors.

Well, Martin said later that he really was not hurt and that the TV camera was really broken.

Actually, she was one of the very few headmasters of the striking high-schools (and that only some hi-schools went on strike!) who almost completely supported us from the beginning. However, she was probably no revolutionaire, given her past. However, this helped her in surviving in the position of headmaster until almost 1995, probably as only one "old-structure" headmaster .

Just one of so many false rumors. They were being spread from everywhere and our fear only enhanced them.

The last communist president of Czechoslovakia (from 1970 (?) till 1989). His live was very interesting, because he was in fact in a communist jail in the 50's. After the Prague spring, he was one of the central figures of the "normalization". In the 1980s, he was rather a puppet of the hard-line sharks and a typical representant of the gerontocracy.

The "civic education" was a subject where we were taught the "scientific marxism-leninism". What a horrible class full of bullshit it was! (well, at least I can explain here in the States what's the difference between communism and socialism).