20th Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution

A stylised bell formed from a row of keys — a symbol of peaceful protest — with the inscription '17. NOVEMBER SLOBODA DEMOKRACIA' and the years '1989–2009', the state name 'SLOVENSKO', the stylised initials of designer Pavel Károly, and the mint mark.

In November 1989, a regime that had held power for four decades collapsed in Czechoslovakia within a matter of weeks. It began with student demonstrations in Prague on 17 November 1989, which were brutally suppressed and triggered a wave of nationwide protests. Hundreds of thousands gathered in the streets of Bratislava and other Slovak cities, jingling their keys and demanding democracy and free elections — a nonviolent pressure the communist regime had no answer to. The term "Velvet Revolution" stands for this transition: no armed uprising, no risk of civil war, but a civic upheaval that transformed Czechoslovakia into a parliamentary democracy in record time.

For Slovakia, the watershed of 1989 was far more than a change of political system. It laid the foundation for the state independence the country achieved in 1993 through the peaceful separation from the Czech Republic, and it paved the way to the European Union and NATO, which Slovakia joined in 2004. Freedom and democracy — in Slovak, "sloboda" and "demokracia" — became guiding concepts of modern Slovak self-understanding. To mark the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, Slovakia issued a 2-euro commemorative coin in 2009 recalling this turning point.