Slovakia Today, English Language Current Affairs Programme from Slovak Radio

On this 31st anniversary of the Velvet Revolution of 1989, which marks the end of Soviet communism in Czechoslovakia, we replay for you two stories from this past year that illustrate some of the ways the former communist regime shaped the lives of the people who lived under it. First, two Slovak Christians, a Catholic and a Protestant, remember their difficult lives under the old regime and the events leading up to its collapse. Then we'll hear from a Slovak man who was born in Canada because both his parents, before they ever met, had settled in that country after emigrating from Czechoslovakia under difficult circumstances during the August 1968 crisis, when Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into the country.