Your Excellency, distinguished guests, and friends…

I’m delighted to have been invited to address you on this proud 15th anniversary.

Looking back on the ‘Velvet Revolution,' when Czechoslovakia threw off the yoke of four decades of Communist rule, it’s still hard for many to believe that it took place.

As you all know, Czechoslovakia was then ruled by one of the most repressive regimes on earth.  The conventional wisdom was that it would be the last of the Soviet satellites to undertake reform.

And yet, your country’s yearning for freedom could not be extinguished.

The world watched as 10,000 of your most courageous students took to the streets to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Jan Opletal.

And during the next few days, the world witnessed one of the most powerful expressions of human will that has ever taken place; crowds of over 600,000 grew in Wenceslas Square, day after day.

VACLEV HAVEL: LIVING IN  TRUTH

The reaction in my own family must have been fairly typical among Canadians. We’d protested the imprisonment of Vaclev Havel outside the Czech Embassy with placards on two occasions. One day, one of my young daughters said something like this, “Isn’t the new President the same Mr. Havel we were all trying to get out of prison six months ago?”  Indeed it was.

Incredibly, in one week, a dictatorship was brought to its knees and a new government was sworn in. What seemed an impossible feat a year before had been accomplished non-violently in just three weeks.

This should lie as a model of the power of non-violent protest around the world. Democrats in many areas of conflict in the world today could learn from the coordinated efforts and success of this resistance movement.

Certainly, there was a deep democratic tradition in the Czech and Slovak republics, recognized around the world.

One Canadian diplomat active in Czechoslovakia at the time, Rob McRae, wrote that: "Thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people would rush forward...so all would see the regime for what it was, without equivocation.  And this had come about because the need to live in truth, experienced by a growing number of people, was converted into the courage to do so." 

For McRae, it was as though a whole nation of people were thinking as Havel thought when he said "I base my actions on a fairly simple human philosophy: namely, that I have to say what I think.  I have to speak the truth.  I have to fight for the things I know to be right."

The universal humanity and spirituality of the revolution, and the theories used to define it, clearly explains the broad popular appeal of the revolution.

VELVET REVOLUTION

If you type the words “Velvet Revolution” into the Google search engine, you get 398,000 hits in English. What's remarkable is how many of these don't relate to Czechoslovakia.  I think it’s safe to say that this is because the Velvet Revolution has come to represent in some ways the highest aspirations of people living under dictatorships everywhere.

By bringing forth transformative, sudden, and life-affirming change through the power of popular will alone, Czechoslovakia helped to show a cynical and sometimes weary world that dreams are still possible.  That message still resonates today.

Recently, I had the occasion to meet with a group of Ukrainian students. As you can imagine, they are very concerned right now about the upcoming runoff election for President on November 21st - they are hopeful that it will be free and fair, but they are deeply worried.  Aside from some very corrupt practices in the first vote, we have the continuing spectacle of President Putin of Russia campaigning across Ukraine for the candidate he prefers, as if Ukraine had not won its independence and democracy in 1991.  He thinks Ukraine is still a vassal province of Russia.

For a couple of days last week, my office assisted them in planning a rally on Parliament Hill to call for free and fair elections in a strictly non-partisan way.  During conversations with these students, the subject of the Velvet Revolution came up—you wouldn't believe how the faces of these young people lit up just thinking about it.

The students expressed the hope that if democracy is thwarted in Ukraine this week that their country could find a way to follow your example from fifteen years ago.

In today's world, where violence is increasingly used as a means to create political change, we are desperately in need of examples of the effective use of non-violence to achieve great changes. Your own victory, and its continuing influence, is certainly worth celebrating.

So, on this historic anniversary, I commend you on what is truly a unique and significant past. It is an example you have provided for the present, and we all look forward with anticipation to your future.

Thank you.