Region: When Freedom Came
Like a convict released from prison after many years: freedom suddenly returns, but you don’t know how to handle it. This is how Václav Havel, one of the leaders of the Velvet Revolution and the first president of Czechoslovakia after 1989, recently characterised the post-communist condition. Indeed, 20 years after the sound of ringing keys had vanished from the squares of Slovak towns most people agree that the transformation has been tough and often disappointing. But freedom remains, and November 17 now symbolises the day when Slovaks did away with totalitarianism…