Nevítaný pokus o emancipaci
An Unwelcome Attempt at Emancipation

The Federal Assembly and the Czechoslovak Revolution of 1989

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to chart out the efforts to strengthen the Federal Assembly as the supreme Czechoslovak legislative body during what became known as the Velvet Revolution beginning in late 1989, and to identify and explain the causes of the failure of these efforts. The authors are advocates of the ‘new institutionalism’, an approach that focuses on the less visible actors and processes, such as implicit customs, values, procedures, and myths, which institutions pass on to each other. In Communist Czechoslovakia, the legislature played a secondary role, and during the watershed year of 1989, the key political debates and negotiations also avoided the legislature; it did not become the stage on which politics were played out, nor even an arena in which to demonstrate who was more powerful. That began to change in late November 1989, after the fall of the old Communist leadership and during the change in political régime. The authors explain the principles of the operation of the Federal Assembly and its political composition, and demonstrate how, in the person of its spokesman, Anton Blažej (1927–2013), the Communist majority began to take action in the Federal Assembly, and came out in favour of the principles of democracy and a fully fl edged role for the legislature, and eventually became a possible obstacle to the election of Václav Havel (1936–2011) to the Czechoslovak presidency. Events, however, took a different turn. The Civic Forum became the new centre of power, and achieved the decisive position also in the ‘government of national understanding’, which was formed in the Federal Assembly, but without the participation of the deputies to that legislature. The Federal Assembly again quickly became dependent on the executive, and its role did not begin to grow until the spring of 1990, after the Civic Forum was represented there by co-opting new deputies.

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