Thousands of people poured onto the streets of Prague Monday to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of communism in the country then known as Czechoslovakia.
On November 17, 1989, student marchers, taking their cue from the fall of the Berlin Wall, sparked a series of nationwide protests that came to be known as the Velvet Revolution, which led to the communist government's collapse.
By December that year, dissident playwright Vaclav Havel was voted in as president, the first democratically elected president in decades.
Four years later, the country peacefully divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Czech Republic is now a member of the European Union and NATO.
Monday's celebrations included protests against the country's current political leadership under President Milos Zeman, whom some believe to be overly pro-Russian.
