Russia and Its Neighbors - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 235

day 15,000 rallied in Prague. They demanded an end to the Communist
government. On the 20th the crowd was 200,000 and the next day it was
500,000. The police and the army did not try very hard to repress the dem-
onstrations. On the 28th the regime announced it would resign. The event
was called the Velvet Revolution because it was so smooth.
The Communist regimes were collapsing in all of Eastern Europe. The
USSR, under the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, was loosening its con-
trol over its satellites. It was no longer providing military support to the
old-line dictators. Mass demonstrations occurred in Poland, Hungary,
and East Germany. In all Eastern European countries (save one, Rumania)
the revolutions were peaceful. In virtually all of them, environmentalists
played a role.
Immediately after the success of the Velvet Revolution, environmental-
ists enjoyed a period of euphoria. A Green Party appeared. The government
established a Ministry of the Environment, and the Ministry promul-
gated a unified program. It assumed responsibility for land use planning
and building codes from the economic ministries. Yet within two years
environmental policy took a U-turn. Many progressive features were aban-
doned. Rather than taking a comprehensive view, the government focused
on the minutia of the end of the pipe or the top of the smokestack. The
lofty concept of sustainable development disappeared. The Green Party
fell apart. Popular support, once seeming to be so strong, disappeared.
Analysis of the demise of the “enthusiastic period” concluded that much
of the environmental support was really anti-Communism. Furthermore,
Czech adherents were sparser than in the West and lacked a background
from which to view the broader social aspects. They tended to be engi-
neers and technicians. 8
More ominously, friction increased between the Czechs and the
Slovakians. Soviet domination had kept the two halves united just as
the Austrian Empire had prior to 1918. Without an imperial overlord, the
country divided. The Czechs had a higher level of income and more ties
to the West, and the Slovakians resented this. The forced privatization of
industry was not accepted very well in the eastern half. Overall incomes
fell and unemployment increased, adding to tensions. In 1992 the two
peacefully went their separate ways.
In the ensuing years, Czech environmental movement failed to live up
to its initial promise. Although a few citizen groups formed, their mem-
bership was small and they had little money. They depended, at least in
part, on funding from abroad, which was uncertain and undermined their