Slovakia Today, English Language Current Affairs Programme from Slovak Radio

17th November is the day when Slovakia observes the Day of the Struggle for Freedom and Democracy. It goes back to the Velvet Revolution of 1989, when the totalitarian communist regime in then Czechoslovakia was abolished after 45 years. On the show today, you can look forward to two interesting stories that reflect the importance of freedom and democracy as perceived back then, but also today. Such as the one of Nadia Conway, who was born in Prague, lived in Poprad, but after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, she fled to the UK. There she waited for the change of the regime in her home country. That came in the autumn of 1989. But before we get to the story of returning home after the fall of the totalitarian regime, we will speak about one of the political personalities closely tied with the regime in fact. Alexander Dubček was one of the most popular communist politicians in the late 1960s, during the so-called Prague Spring. After the Soviet invasion he was pushed aside, even banned from appearing in public. During the Velvet Revolution, he once again rose to popular glory. In a few days we will commemorate 100 years since Dubček‘s birth. On the show today, we will speak about his early childhood, spent in a utopist commune in Kyrgyzstan.