„Chceme světlo! Chceme studovat!“. Demonstrace studentů z vysokoškolských kolejí v Praze na Strahově 31. října 1967
We want the light, we want to study_Demonstration of students from Praha–Strahov university campus on 31 october 1967

Summary/Abstract: In the evening of 31 October of 1967 the lights went out again across the whole of the Strahov campus. This resulted in a spontaneous demonstration by students to protest against the emergency situation in the residential part, already long neglected. The demonstrators faced intervention by the Public Police forces whose action, verging on brutality, resulted in many injuries, some of them severe. The police intervention, as well as the reaction taken by the relevant authorities, outraged university students and the general public. For students, who were the biggest critics of Antonin Novotny’s regime, the Strahov events became the turning point. The following weeks in the universities of Prague were spent in fervent discussion on the further existence of organisations of the Czechoslovak Union of Youth, whose show of loyalty to the regime discredited them in the eyes of the students. From the end of 1967 students actually began to establish a new system of self-government outside the Union’s organisations. The Strahov events, together with the failure to resolve the economic crisis, harsh disputes with the Slovaks and conflicts with the cultural scene, documented the incompetence of Antonin Novotny’s regime in facing up to the state’s problems, and eventually contributed to his dismissal from his position as the first chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia at the beginning of January 1968.

• Details
• Contents