FEMALE STUDENTS REMEMBER 1989

The publication in book form of the authentic diary records and memoirs of Monika MacDonagh-Pajerová from the 1980–1989 period. Vezměte s sebou květinu! (Take Flowers with You!) is the voice of the most distinctive “girlish face” of the Velvet Revolution. At times her voice is fragile and vulnerable. At others she presents an uncompromising account of the mire of normalisation, the period of cautious political thaw and the fall of the communist regime after the events of November 1989.

Andrea Sedláčková’s book is entitled Moje pařížská revoluce (My Paris Revolution). In September 1989 there was a thaw in Poland and Hungary, 10,000 East Germans fled from the country and one unimaginable report after the other was emerging from a Soviet Union undergoing perestroika. Everything was in flux. Only in Czechoslovakia did it seem that nothing was happening. Two months before November 1989, a young FAMU student decided on a risky and fateful step. She would stay in Paris. What followed were weeks and months full of dramatic situations, uncertainties and disappointments, but also the enchantment of a new environment, a beautiful city worth living in and freedom worth breathing in.

Photo (c) Pavel Hroch