Everybody has to have role models in the life to become better person. People are of course inspired by great role models and idols to be good citizens. They can be politicians, artists, writers or just simple people who admire theír counry and do all the best for it to be prosperous, they are simly good citizens. Students were also inspired by some role models who were or still are great people, citizens and heroes for the others. Here you will find some of them who are real inspirations for us - young generation.
Slovak students are inspired by Alexander Dubček and his autobiography „HOPE DIES LAST“
Alexander Dubček led Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring of 1968. Though Alexander Dubček was a communist, he erred on the side of reform, which went against what his masters in Moscow would have wanted for Czechoslovakia as they feared the break-up of the Warsaw Pact. Dubček’s fall from grace and power was swift.
He wrote his book – authobiography HOPE DIES LAST and we are areally insired by it and mainly the facts from his heroic life. You can read his short biography here.
Alexander Dubček was born in 1921 in Uhrovek, Slovakia. When he was aged four, his family moved to the Soviet Union and he grew up in the solidly communist country where the rule of Joseph Stalin was supreme. Dubček became a product of the Soviet education system and became a loyal communist. In 1938, Dubček returned to Slovakia and secretly joined the Communist Party in 1939. The occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 and the Second World War focussed the attention of the people against a common foe so that internal politics mattered little. In 1944, Dubček joined the Slovak Resistance.
The end of the war brought huge changes to Eastern Europe. The Cold War and the enmity between East and West meant that Stalin demanded an effective barrier around the Soviet Union so that if war in Europe did occur, countries like Czechoslovakia, Poland and Romania would take the brunt before and if the battlefield reached the Soviet border. Above all else, Stalin wanted to avoid the horrific devastation suffered by the Soviet Union during World War Two and the Eastern Bloc became his protective barrier.
Immediately after World War Two, the Russian secret police, the KGB, removed anyone who was considered to be a problem from East European nations under Soviet control. Loyal communists were installed into government positions so that all these countries would be loyal to Moscow without question. Dubček had not yet reached such heights but was appointed a Communist Party official in 1949. Between 1955 and 1958, he was sent back to the Soviet Union to receive “political education” and his success in this area propelled him into higher government posts.
By 1958, Dubček was seen as a good reliable communist who would support the leadership in Moscow. When he returned to Czechoslovakia, Dubček was appointed Principal Secretary of the Slovak Communist Party in Bratislava. He gained a reputation for effective leadership in Slovakia and as a man who did not want to buck the system.
In the mid-1960’s there was mounting dissent towards the Party’s leader in Czechoslovakia, Antonin Novotný who failed to solve the country’s increasingly difficult economic situation. While he did not lead the attacks against Novotný, Dubček did allow himself to be put forward as the man who should succeed him. On January 5th 1968, the party’s central committee nominated Dubček to succeed Novotný after the Czechoslovak Party Central Committee passed a vote of no confidence in Novotný.
What happened next must have come as a great surprise to the communist leaders in Moscow. Dubček announced that he wanted the Czech Communist Party to remain the predominant party in Czechoslovakia, but that he wanted the totalitarian aspects of the party to be reduced. Communist Party members in Czechoslovakia were given the right to challenge party policy as opposed to the traditional acceptance of all government policy. Party members were given the right to act “according to their conscience”. In what became known as the ‘Prague Spring’, he also announced the end of censorship and the right of Czech citizens to criticise the government. Newspapers took the opportunity to produce scathing reports about government incompetence and corruption.
Dubček also announced that farmers would have the right to form independent co-operatives and that trade unions would have increased rights to bargain for their members. Crucially, however, Dubček stated that Czechoslovakia had no intention of leaving the Warsaw Pact.
Between July and August 1968, he met senior Moscow politicians on the Slovakian-Ukraine border to reassure them that they had nothing to worry about and that what he was trying to achieve would have no bearing on the Warsaw Pact and its ability to compete with NATO. He repeated the same message to all members of the Warsaw Pact on August 3rd 1968.
However, Dubček was informed by Moscow that they had discovered evidence that West Germany was planning to invade the Sudetenland and that the Soviet Union would provide Czechoslovakia with the troops needed to protect her from invasion. Dubček refused the offer but he must have known that this would count for nothing.
His reassurances about not leaving the Warsaw Pact were ignored and on August 20th/21st Soviet troops (with token forces from other members of the Warsaw Pact) invaded Czechoslovakia. Dubček was arrested by released after talks in Moscow. Dubček claimed that the talks had been “comradely” and that he was abandoning his reform programme. As a result, Dubček remained as First Secretary until April 1969 when he was appointed Speaker of the Federal Assembly until he was expelled from the Communist Party in 1970. Following his expulsion, he was banished to Bratislava where he worked in a timber yard.
For the next nineteen years he was, and had to be, politically dormant. However, Dubček had a political renaissance in 1989 when the Cold War ended. In November 1989, Dubček was once again appointed Speaker of the Federal Assembly. He was fiercely against the split between what was to become the Czech Republic and Slovakia as he felt that a continued union between the two best benefited both. However, he never got to see the ultimate development and outcome of the ‘Velvet Revolution’ as in July 1992 he was badly injured in a car accident and died from his injuries in November 1992.
We are really proud of this national hero and he is a great example of a good citizen, responsible personality, who wanted the positive change for all Czechoslovaks and Slovaks and we are inspired by his book about his life…
Slovak students involved in the project „EUROPE@N CITIZENSHIP - EUROPE@N IDENTITY“ were discussing who has influenced them in the way to become a good citizen. They think that one of the greatist examples can be VACLAV HAVEL – a former Czechoslovak a nd Czech president. They were discussing and reading some parts of the book „MAN VÁCLAV HAVEL“. We offer our project partners a short review of this book and some photos taken at the workshop. The book „MAN VÁCLAV HAVEL“ was written by the Czech author Petr Čermák. It is about Václav Havel was undoubtedly a remarkable human phenomenon and extraordinarily brave man with incredible intellectual content and link. After all, changed the Czech and helped transform Central and Eastern Europe. First, writer and playwright significant, then dissident and prisoner and eventually president of the Czechoslovaks and Czechs, but especially a man. A very strong humanity is intertwined fully authorized book, based on the significant birthday Vaclav Havel, a man of smaller stature, but meaning completely unique. Whether you are almost at any place of our planet and say his name, you will get a ticket to an imaginary world. Simple - everyone knows ...
But not everyone knows about the various positions Havel complex and rare and colourful spirit endowed with personality. The author is reveals the mutual meetings and also through perspectives of both wives, Olga and Dagmar, and important people who knew him intimately and know. Extremely interesting insights are also needed a bodyguard Petra PAVKA, which alongside its president spent more than two decades. The book author is an experienced and insightful at the same time attractive especially by Vaclav Havel is the way he really is, draws and original photographic narrative quality. Slovak students were reading some parts of the book and liked its main hero - Václav Havel. We really recommend it to readers of all ages to read and be inspired by his life and a great deedsnot only for citizens of Czechoslovakia and the Czech republic but for Europe and the whole world.
Citizen Havel“ an inspiring film
Slovak students have chosen to watch and discuss the film which influenced them in forming them as citizens the Czech film called „CITIZEN HAVEL“ made by Documentary, Art House & International and directed By: Miroslav Janek and Pavel Koutecký. You can watch a piece of the film with us on YouTube.
Few movers and shakers in 20th century Eastern European history can claim the accomplishments or the legacy of former Czechoslovakian president Václav Havel. An ardent supporter of democratic political systems, Havel was subjected to systematic persecution by the Communists at an early age, and went on (during adulthood) to lead the "Velvet Revolution" of 1989 - a non-violent coup triggering the fall of the Czech Communist regime that accompanied the collapse of the entire Iron Curtain. All told, Havel served as the ninth president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 through 1992 and the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 through 2003. As a film produced over a grueling 12-year span, Pavel Koutecky's Citizen Havel presents a biographical portrait of Havel over a lengthy period, comprised not of familiar, media-covered events (as might be expected) but of numerous "candid" behind-the-scenes moments and events, such as the president's preparations for the famous 2002 NATO summit meeting, a visit with Bill Clinton in early 1994, and Havel's wife's death in 1996. The result provides a view of a nation undergoing some of the most tumultuous social and political changes in its entire history, as filtered through the highly personal and intimate lens of the man leading the way to a Czechoslovakian democratic transition. Director Koutecky died in a freak falling accident, toward the end of the film's productio. Unfortunately, Vaclav Havel died to obut he is a great role model for all of us, not only like the man but the citizen. We recommend this film to all our partners, we are sure you will be inspired.
Romanian students inspired by the movie about Doina Cornea dissident
In 1989, the Thorolf Rafto Foundation decided to award two prizes: one personal award for Doina Cornea (1929) and one group award for FIDESZ, the Hungarian youth opposition movement.
The first of the 1989 Rafto Prizes was awarded to Doina Cornea for her work as a dissident during the communist regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania.
Doina Cornea started her activist work in 1982 while working as a professor for a Romanian university. She was fired a year later after releasing texts and protests against the Ceauşescu regime, to Radio Free Europe. Despite being arrested in 1983 by the Securitate - the Romanian communist secret police-, and being interrogated, beaten, and threatened with death, she continued for the next six years to release a total of 31 texts and protests to Radio Free Europe.
Together with her son, she released 160 manifestos against the communist regime. Doina Cornea and her son were both arrested and held in custody for five weeks in 1997. She was then put under house arrest for two years.
Following her release Doina Cornea continued her outspokenness against new communist regimes. She co-founded the Democratic Anti-totalitarian Forum of Romania (Forumul Democrat Antitotalitar din România), the first attempt to unify democratic opposition to the post-communist government. This organisation later became the Romanian Democratic Convention. Doina Cornea later also co-founded The Group for Social Dialogue (Grupul pentru Dialog Social) in Romania, The Civic Alliance Foundation and The Cultural Memory Foundation.
In 1989, the Thorolf Rafto Foundation decided to award two prizes: one personal award for Doina Cornea (1929) and one group award for FIDESZ, the Hungarian youth opposition movement.
The first of the 1989 Rafto Prizes was awarded to Doina Cornea for her work as a dissident during the communist regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania.
Doina Cornea started her activist work in 1982 while working as a professor for a Romanian university. She was fired a year later after releasing texts and protests against the Ceauşescu regime, to Radio Free Europe. Despite being arrested in 1983 by the Securitate - the Romanian communist secret police-, and being interrogated, beaten, and threatened with death, she continued for the next six years to release a total of 31 texts and protests to Radio Free Europe.
Together with her son, she released 160 manifestos against the communist regime. Doina Cornea and her son were both arrested and held in custody for five weeks in 1997. She was then put under house arrest for two years.
Following her release Doina Cornea continued her outspokenness against new communist regimes. She co-founded the Democratic Anti-totalitarian Forum of Romania (Forumul Democrat Antitotalitar din România), the first attempt to unify democratic opposition to the post-communist government. This organisation later became the Romanian Democratic Convention. Doina Cornea later also co-founded The Group for Social Dialogue (Grupul pentru Dialog Social) in Romania, The Civic Alliance Foundation and The Cultural Memory Foundation.
Citizen Havel“ an inspiring film
Slovak students have chosen to watch and discuss the film which influenced them in forming them as citizens the Czech film called „CITIZEN HAVEL“ made by Documentary, Art House & International and directed By: Miroslav Janek and Pavel Koutecký. You can watch a piece of the film with us on YouTube.
Few movers and shakers in 20th century Eastern European history can claim the accomplishments or the legacy of former Czechoslovakian president Václav Havel. An ardent supporter of democratic political systems, Havel was subjected to systematic persecution by the Communists at an early age, and went on (during adulthood) to lead the "Velvet Revolution" of 1989 - a non-violent coup triggering the fall of the Czech Communist regime that accompanied the collapse of the entire Iron Curtain. All told, Havel served as the ninth president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 through 1992 and the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 through 2003. As a film produced over a grueling 12-year span, Pavel Koutecky's Citizen Havel presents a biographical portrait of Havel over a lengthy period, comprised not of familiar, media-covered events (as might be expected) but of numerous "candid" behind-the-scenes moments and events, such as the president's preparations for the famous 2002 NATO summit meeting, a visit with Bill Clinton in early 1994, and Havel's wife's death in 1996. The result provides a view of a nation undergoing some of the most tumultuous social and political changes in its entire history, as filtered through the highly personal and intimate lens of the man leading the way to a Czechoslovakian democratic transition. Director Koutecky died in a freak falling accident, toward the end of the film's productio. Unfortunately, Vaclav Havel died to obut he is a great role model for all of us, not only like the man but the citizen. We recommend this film to all our partners, we are sure you will be inspired.
Romanian students inspired by the movie about Doina Cornea dissident
In 1989, the Thorolf Rafto Foundation decided to award two prizes: one personal award for Doina Cornea (1929) and one group award for FIDESZ, the Hungarian youth opposition movement.
The first of the 1989 Rafto Prizes was awarded to Doina Cornea for her work as a dissident during the communist regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania.
Doina Cornea started her activist work in 1982 while working as a professor for a Romanian university. She was fired a year later after releasing texts and protests against the Ceauşescu regime, to Radio Free Europe. Despite being arrested in 1983 by the Securitate - the Romanian communist secret police-, and being interrogated, beaten, and threatened with death, she continued for the next six years to release a total of 31 texts and protests to Radio Free Europe.
Together with her son, she released 160 manifestos against the communist regime. Doina Cornea and her son were both arrested and held in custody for five weeks in 1997. She was then put under house arrest for two years.
Following her release Doina Cornea continued her outspokenness against new communist regimes. She co-founded the Democratic Anti-totalitarian Forum of Romania (Forumul Democrat Antitotalitar din România), the first attempt to unify democratic opposition to the post-communist government. This organisation later became the Romanian Democratic Convention. Doina Cornea later also co-founded The Group for Social Dialogue (Grupul pentru Dialog Social) in Romania, The Civic Alliance Foundation and The Cultural Memory Foundation.
In 1989, the Thorolf Rafto Foundation decided to award two prizes: one personal award for Doina Cornea (1929) and one group award for FIDESZ, the Hungarian youth opposition movement.
The first of the 1989 Rafto Prizes was awarded to Doina Cornea for her work as a dissident during the communist regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania.
Doina Cornea started her activist work in 1982 while working as a professor for a Romanian university. She was fired a year later after releasing texts and protests against the Ceauşescu regime, to Radio Free Europe. Despite being arrested in 1983 by the Securitate - the Romanian communist secret police-, and being interrogated, beaten, and threatened with death, she continued for the next six years to release a total of 31 texts and protests to Radio Free Europe.
Together with her son, she released 160 manifestos against the communist regime. Doina Cornea and her son were both arrested and held in custody for five weeks in 1997. She was then put under house arrest for two years.
Following her release Doina Cornea continued her outspokenness against new communist regimes. She co-founded the Democratic Anti-totalitarian Forum of Romania (Forumul Democrat Antitotalitar din România), the first attempt to unify democratic opposition to the post-communist government. This organisation later became the Romanian Democratic Convention. Doina Cornea later also co-founded The Group for Social Dialogue (Grupul pentru Dialog Social) in Romania, The Civic Alliance Foundation and The Cultural Memory Foundation.
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