Labyrintem revoluce – Suk Jiří (2020)

Historian Jiří Suk, in his book Labyrinth of the Revolution: Actors, Plots, and Crossroads of a Political Crisis, discusses the Czechoslovak November Revolution of 1989 in a synthetic manner, based on thorough research, with a critical perspective and a sense of the dramatic nature of the subject. At its center are both the Civic Forum as an actor of political change and the struggle for power and the shape of the emerging social transformation. In the first part, the author traces the chaotic formation of a power counterbalance to the communist 'state party,' depicts the ideas of Václav Havel and other protagonists about politics, and tracks their dissident roots and transformations under the pressure of 'real politics.' He brings closer the clashes and compromises of individual political entities in the power game during the negotiations at the 'round table' and during the reconstruction of governments, compares the differing dynamics of development in the Czech lands and Slovakia, and concludes his account with a depiction of the maneuvers surrounding Václav Havel's presidential election as a key point in the first phase of the power takeover. In the second part, the author analyzes a number of themes that dominated the political scene in the first half of 1990: the ideological and organizational split of the Civic Forum and the emergence of new political parties within it, disputes over...