A student who never died helped topple Czechoslovakia's communist government
After riot police beat students in Prague on 17 November 1989, word spread that one of them, Martin Šmíd, had been killed. No such death had happened. The rumour, begun by an injured college employee and carried by Radio Free Europe, still pushed hesitant citizens onto the streets in their hundreds of thousands.
The march that started it was officially sanctioned. The communist youth union organised it for International Students' Day, marking fifty years since the Nazis stormed Prague's universities in 1939 and killed the student Jan Opletal. About 15,000 people walked to the poet Karel Hynek Mácha's grave at Vyšehrad, then kept going into the city centre chanting anti-communist slogans. At around 7:30 in the evening a police cordon on Národní Street trapped and attacked them. When the crowd scattered, one man lay motionless: Ludvík Zifčák, a secret police agent who had simply fainted.
Drahomíra Dražská, hurt in the melee, invented the dead student while waiting for treatment and passed the tale on the next day, including to the wife of a Radio Free Europe correspondent. State television later aired an interview with Šmíd to prove he was alive, but the recording was so poor that doubts lingered, and by the time the truth was settled the movement had momentum.
Theatres became its headquarters. Actors stopped performing and instead read proclamations from students and artists, calling for a general strike, while stages hosted open debates. In a Prague theatre Václav Havel and fellow dissidents founded Civic Forum; in Bratislava about 500 artists and scientists formed its Slovak counterpart, Public Against Violence. Crowds in Prague swelled from 200,000 to an estimated 500,000 by 20 November.
The party's entire leadership, including Miloš Jakeš, quit on 24 November, and a two-hour nationwide strike followed three days later. On 28 November the Communist Party agreed to give up its monopoly, ending 41 years of one-party rule. Havel was elected president on 29 December 1989, and the country later split peacefully into the Czech and Slovak republics.
Source: Velvet Revolution
