The Czech Republic marks on Tuesday the 20th anniversary of the start of the Velvet Revolution that overthrew the communist regime in then Czechoslovakia.

On November 17, 1989, riot police moved in to break up anti-communist speeches at Prague University, triggering a series of demonstrations and strikes that would eventually lead to the installment of the first non-communist government in the country since 1948 and the election of playwright and dissident Vaclav Havel as president before the end of the year.

The Velvet Revolution, or the Gentle Revolution as it is known in Slovakia, the other half of the former Czechoslovakia, was one of a series of revolutions that swept across Eastern Europe in 1989.

Thousands of people are expected to take part in a reenactment of student protests in Prague and other events are also planned across the Czech Republic. The date will also be marked by parliamentary and public events in Slovakia.

Given impetus by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms in the U.S.S.R., largely peaceful revolutions were also carried out in Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Bulgaria in 1989. The only serious violence came in Romania, where dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were executed on December 25.

MOSCOW, November 17 (RIA Novosti)