Prague, November 17, 1989: The Death that never was ©

November 17th is a national holiday in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic: the Struggle for Freedom and Democracy Day. One of the more intriguing stories from the annals of Cold War history has to be the one surrounding the immediate events of November 17, 1989, that directly led to the collapse of Communism known as the Velvet Revolution and the Gentle Revolution in the respective countries.

On Friday, November 17, 1989, there was a huge, sanctioned march and demonstration in Prague in honor of International Students Day and the commemoration of Jan Opletal, who German occupiers shot during a protest demonstration in Prague that day in 1939. An estimated 15 - 20,000 students gathered near Charles University in the afternoon.  

 

Afterward, the students marched to a candlelight ceremony on Prague's famous Vysehard cemetery, where Czech national heroes are buried. The students then marched towards the center of Prague, and the crowd swelled.  Shouts were heard encouraging the group to head towards Wenceslas Square, the traditional site of demonstrations. But along the way, a barricade of riot police blocked the march.   

 

There is no accurate count of the demonstrators on November 17, 1989, but some estimated it to have been over 50 thousand. Demonstrators that night called for the ouster of the Communist regime and an end to Communism. Many students sat down on the streets in response to police requests to leave the area, but thousands did go. At about 8:30 that night, an estimated 10,000 people were still staging a sit-in and refusing to leave the site. More police or militia arrived and blocked the street at the other end. In effect, the crowd, including foreign journalists, was trapped between the police lines.

 

What had started as a peaceful demonstration ended in a brutal and bloody action, when police and other forces attacked the demonstrators and accredited Western journalists observed the activity. For example, journalist Paula Butterini of the Chicago Tribune so was severely beaten that her head wounds required 16 stitches in a local hospital. The video camera of one CNN reporter was taken from him as three plainclothes policemen continually hit him with nightsticks. A BBC reporter was knocked unconscious. Other reporters also had their cameras and video equipment taken from them under brute force. Another journalist had to be transported to Germany because of leg injuries and a concussion. The United States Embassy officially protested the police actions against the accredited American journalists.

 

Numerous persons in the crowd were injured and taken away in busses for treatment.  Others refused medical assistance for fear of giving their names and later suffering police reprisals.

Near the end of the police attacks, a "student" lay on the ground, seemingly unconscious from the police blows he had received.  He was covered with a blanket and taken away by police transport. Word soon spread that he had been beaten to death. The dead student was identified as Martin Smid, a mathematics student from Prague's Charles University.

Dissident Petr Uhl, who ran a small alternative news agency, received reports of Smid’s dead the next day from a woman who had been identified as Smid’s friend. Uhl, in turn, informed various foreign news agencies, including Reuters and Radio Free Europe.  Reports of Smid’s death were heard the next day via radio broadcasts from the BBC, Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe.  

 

The Communist regime responded by denying the reports and producing not one student publicly but two with the name Martin Smid. They were interviewed on Czechoslovak Television to prove that they were alive. A government spokesman described western news agencies that reported the death of Martin Smid as “a deliberate manipulation of people’s minds and an effort to arouse hostile emotions.” Petr Uhl was arrested for spreading false information.

 

This event did not quell the groundswell of protests against the regime that led to larger protests and threats of public strikes if the Communists did not cede power.  On November 22, 1989, for example, an estimated 200,000 people gathered in Wenceslas Square demanding the end of the Communist regime, which would peacefully come in a few days.

 

An investigation into the November 17^th events by the new democratic government showed that the "dead student" was a Czechoslovak Intelligence officer named Ludvík Zifčák who had infiltrated the student movement under the name Milan Růžička, code name “Rudy.“ Zifčák was dismissed from the new intelligence service in July 1990. In 1994 he was found guilty of “abuse of power“ and sentenced to 18 months in prison. After losing his appeal, he served 16 months.

 

In 2003, Martin Smid was interviewed on Czech Radio and said, “I can't understand how the rumor came about in the first place, and why my name was chosen. I became the center of attention for the whole nation, without knowing why or what I could do for my country. To this day, I ask myself again and again: why did it happen and why me?"

The answers most likely will never come.