Communist Prague Tour

This Real Tour deals with the period of Communism in the Czech Republic, from 1948-1989. The decades before, the independent Czechoslovakian state of 1918 and the years of Nazism, 1940-45 form the background. You will get to hear and talk about Czechoslovakia, father and son Masaryk, the division of 1993 and today's Czech Republic.

On this tour you will have a chance to discuss both the citizens everyday life and that of the Central committee in the "Classless Society", the fate of dissidents such as former president Havel as well as WW2 heroes rotting in Uranium mines, the physical work of students and the dealings of informers, see typical communist products and Communist propaganda. You can include a pub or a cafe central to the dissident movement en route, such as the famed Cafe Slavia.

Our tour takes you to the: Old parliament/ now Radio Free Europe, the National Museum, the Monument to Victims of Communism, Wenceslas Square, Politických Street, Narodni Street, Konviktska Street, Old Town Square and the Old Town City Hall. You can finish up at the Museum of Communism

Your tour begins at the Parliament Building of the Communist state, which today houses the American-financed Radio Free Europe. The communists build atop of the old stock exchange. Next we find the National Museum and under the stairs a cross in the pavement marking the actual place where the student Jan Palach lit the fire of his self-immolation in January 1969.

You will get to see the monument dedicated to both Jan Palach and Jan Zajic who self-immolated as a protest against the Soviet invasion.. You will hear about the connection to another "suicide" of then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jan Masaryk son of former President Masaryk, who was "helped out" of the window by a NKVD agent on March 10th, 1948.

In the same place, Wenceslas Square, which is today's commercial center and a hub of business and shopping, a number of major demonstrations took place during the Velvet Revolution of 1989 as well as during and after the Soviet-led invasion by Warsaw Pact countries in 1968.

On an obscure side street you will see the present-day headquarters of the Communist Party. Curiously the Czech Republic is the only former Communist country still to have a communist party with a stable, however aging, electorate. Communism is a theme that sparks fierce reactions among Czechs many of them having collaborated with the system in one way or the other. This is why there was never a Nuremberg Trial like process with the party prominents, nor was the party ever abolished as anti-constitutional.

You will see the Narodni Ulice passage where students were brutally beaten on the 17th of November 1989, an event that sparked the Velvet Revolution. The street where political prisoners were held at the secret police headquarters and the theater where Vaclav Havel premiered a number of his plays. We will end the tour at the Old Town Square where the first Communist State leader, Klement Gottwald, held the rally to proclaim the communist state and denounce all of the 12 Cabinet ministers as traitors, ousting them from the government on February 25th, 1948.

We will touch upon the role the party media played, education, sports and economics and every sphere of daily life. Students used as physical labourers, dissidents disappearing into the uranium mines, trials and executions of the 50's, the Plastic people of the Universe and Charta 77, the STB and the normalization of the 70's as well as the Prague Spring of 1968 and the Samizdat underground press and other quiet subversion. During the trip there will be a number of possibilities to visit pubs and cafes related to dissidents and important events.

Sights included: Old Parliament/Radio Free Europe, National Museum, Monument to Victims of Communism, Wenceslas Square, Politických Street, Narodni Street, Konviktska Street, Old Town Square and the Old Town City Hall.