How the Soviet Union told Czechoslovakia to forget socialism and "the eternal friendship with the Russian people" and to pack and join the adversary's anti-Russian camp

Participants of the Velvet Revolution of 1989 speak out: The orders of the then still nominally communist Soviet leadership to the Czechoslovak state and party communist leadership were clear, categorical and unequivocal: Get out of power before the end of November, let the new anti-Russian regime pick it up and leave all the keys in. During the critical days of November of 1989, the Soviet Embassy communicated to the anti-communist dissent that it is ditching its support of and trust in the communist leadership of Czechoslovakia. Soviet diplomats (KGB officers) even told the representatives of the Civic Forum that great powers already agreed on the division of Czechoslovakia and that the Soviet Union would support it.

Read the account of the representatives of the then dissent, which contains the above summarized information here.

In his book published in 2013, Miroslav Stepan, a former Czechoslovak communist leader, reports that, in September of 1989, the Soviet leadership demanded from him and the then Czechoslovak Prime Minister that Vaclav Havel be made Minister of Culture. Stepan refused to support the idea. Adamec was inclined to go along with it. The subtitle of Stepan's book reads "Treason comes from the Kremlin." Stepan's main thesis is that the "Velvet Revolution" was a joint US-Soviet operation via their intelligence agencies.

"V září 1989 se Rusové pokusili o první nátlak na československé komunisty. Zavolal si ho premiér Adamec, seděli u něho vlivní Rusové a když Štěpán dorazil, pokoušeli se ho přesvědčit, aby souhlasil s tím, že se Václav Havel stane v komunistickém Československu ministrem kultury. Štěpán to razantně odmítl. Uvedl několik procedurálních důvodů a pak dodal: "Přijde mi nemravné, abyste vy nám říkali, kdo bude naším ministrem kultury." Adamec k tomu Rusům dodal: "Vždyť jsem vám to říkal!""