1989: From Letters Across the Iron Curtain

Lesson objectives

• To better understand emigration through the letters of student Petr Kořínek
• To take in the feelings of people who lived in a non-free regime
• To learn about the gradual disintegration of the Soviet bloc, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and student demonstrations leading to the Velvet Revolution

Petr Kořínek is 21. He’s from Pardubice, listens to underground bands, reads samizdat publications, and has problems at school because of his long hair. He also dreams about emigrating. It happens to be early 1989, and there is nothing to indicate that he might see freedom anytime soon in communist Czechoslovakia. “I can’t imagine staying in a police state where there is always someone else deciding about my life,” he writes in a letter to his parents on 7 February, 1989, just before boarding a train heading to Paris.

Tato lekce je k dispozici i v české verzi.