Instytuty Polskie > Instytut Polski w Pradze > Daily Courage. Polish, Czech and Slovak Women in Anti-Communist Dissent 1968-1989 / 11 – INSPIRERS

INSPIRERS
Without faith, energy, and passion, most of the actions against the communist regime would have failed. It was often women who opened up space for discussion, inspired opposition activities, and mobilized people to protest.

Jana Soukupová: „I went straight from the mayor’s office to the square, where the sound system was already set up, grabbed the microphone, and that’s how I got to be the moderator. Then I came up with the idea of a chain of human hands from Brno to Bohunice.“

Jana Soukupová moderated demonstrations in Brno in 1989.
Source: J. Soukupová’s private archive
In the summer of 1981, mass protests called „hunger marches“ took place in almost twenty Polish cities. Most of the participants were women with children demanding adequate food supplies and improved living conditions. The largest of these protests, in Łódź, was led by Janina Konczak and attended by tens of thousands of people.
Łódź, July 30, 1981, source: Ośrodek KARTA Archive, photo by Tomasz Tomaszewski
Magda Hlaváčová, daughter of a political prisoner, was one of the initiators of the student march on November 16, 1989, in Bratislava. Students also commemorated the Candlelight Demonstration and chanted political slogans. Student Henrieta Hrinková (in the foreground of the photo) spoke courageously on camera. Source: reproduction of a photo from STVR
During the August strikes at the Gdańsk shipyards, Alina Pienkowska convinced the workers that they must not agree to the initial agreements and must continue their protests in solidarity with other companies. The photo shows her speaking at the Solidarity congress in Nowy Targ on October 19, 1980.
Photo: Leszek Biernacki
On June 1, 1989, Mária Filková (first from the right in the photo) co-organized a march of mothers with children in front of Bratislava City Hall with Zora Pauliniová. The children wrote and signed a letter, which they handed over to the mayor, expressing their dissatisfaction with the state of the environment in Bratislava. Filková was later the only woman on the Coordinating Committee of the opposition civic political movement Public Against Violence.
Photo: Ľ. Lacinová