The Movement of Revolutionary Youth (HRM) was a predominantly student group with a radical left orientation that was founded at the beginning of December 1968 and that stood up against the upcoming Normalization until it was broken by the State Security during the winter of 1969 to 1970. Members of the HRM organised intense activity ahead of the first anniversary of the August occupation when they wanted to mobilize people against the Normalization regime. They published several leaflets for this occasion, one of them being the leaflet “To all – to all – to all!” which was signed by “workers, students, intelligentsia” and that urged non-violent protests on 21 August 1969, such as to boycotting public transportation, the press and shops. Pavel Šremer and Radan Baše from the Movement, and in cooperation with a printing trade union in Prague, saw to the printing of 200-thousand small leaflets. Initially, poet Jaroslav Seifert was asked to write up the text of the leaflet by the students. He thanked them for their trust but he declined their request arguing that they would manage to write the right text themselves. The final version was written collectively under the supervision of Petr Uhl. The whole event was finally called the Black Coffee Operation after two men in the printing trade union, Černý and Turek, and also as an allusion to the statement of the First Secretary of the SED Walter Ulbricht about the “coffee sediment of intellectuals in Prague”. The leaflets were also distributed beyond Prague, predominantly in North Bohemia and scattered by an engine driver, who was an acquaintance of Pavel Šremer, and his colleagues.
Location
Senovážné nám. 2, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic
Show on map
Jaroslav Pažout, e-mail message to Michaela Kůželová, March 25, 2018.
Pažout, Jaroslav. 2001. Fond Československé studentské hnutí v šedesátých letech dvacátého století (sbírka Ivana Dejmala) [Catalogue]. Praha: Libri prohibiti. Accessible at http://www.libpro.cz/docs/eskoskoslovenske-studentske-hnuti-v-sedesatych-letech-dvacateho-stoleti-sbirka-ivana_1359814477.pdf.