The day the border was opened

(Archives B2) Czechoslovakia, a somewhat forgotten country, wedged between Poland, Hungary and the USSR, was transformed in a few days. The population suddenly regained speech and thought...

For several weeks, a new life has settled. On the walls and shop windows, it is not uncommon to have to queue to… read, displayed like modern dazibaos *, everyone's comments on the news. In shopping areas, television sets placed in windows broadcast the latest news. Flags are flying everywhere in the national colors, blue-white-red, symbols of restored freedom.

At the heart of this movement,… mainly young people. In the universities occupied by the students on strike, debates and conferences open to all follow one another, while typewriters, computers and mimeographs run almost day and night to print newspapers and leaflets which will then be distributed throughout the country. Coordination is permanently based in the two capitals, Prague and Bratislava. In Bratislava, the 'school coordination' is located a stone's throw from the castle in a classroom of the school of arts, in the same place as the student coordination and the VPN (1). In this room, there is everything: the desk, the bed, the guitar...

This is where I meet Daniella, Zuzana and Peter, three 17-year-old high school students who study at the "conservatoire", a high school specializing in artistic careers (theater, painting, etc.). Only Daniella speaks German, so she will provide the translation.

How are you organized?

The coordination is not a political organization, it is an alternative movement to the "socialist youth organization", so far the only organization for young people. Anyone can come by, get information, discuss, be informed. We meet every evening from 18 p.m. until…, and when everything is exhausted, we stop. Some teachers are very active, most help us, others prefer to keep quiet and do nothing.

Why are you on strike?

- Each school has a specific problem. In our school, for example, we don't have a good teacher, no place to work. On the other hand, we no longer want students who are not interested in the courses, and who come because they are encouraged, their parents being good communists.

- We must also reform the courses. We no longer want compulsory Marxist education. And then there's too much math or physics, and not enough philosophy or history. We don't know anything about the modern history of our country, because the program stops at 1918.

- The government has done nothing for 20 years. The economy, the environment,… nothing is going well. Here we want a change in politics.

What has marked you in recent days?

- Solidarity. The whole population is with us and helps us. They bring us food, drink, blankets… A baker came to bring some bread rolls this morning.  

- Friendship. After that, nothing will be like before. In the past few days, we haven't slept much, but we have talked a lot, among ourselves, with the teachers. We did things together.

- Freedom. People talk about things they wouldn't have talked about before. We didn't think it would happen like this, so easily. In twenty years, we will be able to tell lots of memories to our children. For example, the Swedish woman who proposed that we award the Nobel Prize to students, that was great. It is not to have the Nobel that is important, it was to propose it.

Epilogue

…Just before I leave, a student walks into the room, grinning from ear to ear. He says a few words in Slovak. Before I had time to be translated, it's the explosion of joy on the faces, everyone is talking and laughing... " The television has just announced that the border with Austria will be open in a few days. We can go there without a visa or authorization… freely Daniela can't believe it. Now that they can without constraint, they would like to correspond and possibly be twinned with other schools, particularly French ones. Notice to fans...

(Nicolas Gros-Verheyde)
Published in Phosphore, December 1989

(1) Verejnost Proti Nasiliu (public movement against violence): movement created in November 1989 mainly by actors and ecologists, for a political change in Slovakia.