On November 11, 1992, thousands of coal-miners from northern Bohemia and Ostrava crowded into the Old Town Square in Prague to protest government plans to stop the mining of brown coal and to dose unprofitable black coal pits.1 The miners listened to a speech by Vladimir Dlouhy, Minister of Economics and a leader of the Civic Democratic Alliance (a libertarian party to the right of Vaclav Klaus' Civic Democratic Party). Dlouhy explained that the brown coal mines had to be dosed on environmental grounds and promised further government help to create new jobs. The miners politely applauded and then dispersed for an hour's shopping in the new K Mart and other downtown Prague stores before returning to their buses for the trip home.
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Peter Rutland (1992) studied this question.