CZECH REPUBLIC: A huge picture of Karl Marx hangs immoveable in their hallway, busts of Vladimir Lenin still lurk in their offices, and Prague's communists are bullish as the Czech Republic celebrates 15 years since the "Velvet Revolution" swept them from power, Daniel McLaughlin, in Prague, reports
While the nation remembers the vertiginous rise of dissidents like Vaclav Havel - which began with a huge march for democracy on November 17th, 1989 - Czech communists are quietly preparing for what they believe is their inevitable return to office.
The new member of the European Union and NATO is home to perhaps the most powerful and least reformed Communist Party in the old eastern bloc.
Up to one in four Czechs support it in opinion polls, its members hold a fifth of parliamentary seats, and party officials say it is gaining popularity, even as the country recalls the spectacular defeat of Soviet-backed communism a decade and a half ago.
"It is easy to criticise the old regime and say 'That was communism and it failed', but that's not so," says Dr Vaclav Exner, vice-chairman of the party's Central Committee. "We never had real communism here.
"After 1989 we assessed where we had gone wrong, but we never changed our fundamental beliefs - progress in society and the need to defend the poor."
Now, Dr Exner and his allies say, a party guided by Marx's Communist Manifesto appeals not only to an older generation baffled by the cut-and-thrust of market democracy, but to younger people who want an alternative to the capitalist certainties peddled incessantly by Washington and Brussels.
While not calling for a return to one-party rule, the Communist Party is convinced it can make a difference. It is likely to urge supporters to oppose the EU constitution in a referendum and wants to deeply reform the EU and take the Czech Republic out of NATO, should it win power. That seems a grim, but unlikely, prospect to men like Marek Benda. In his office beneath Prague Castle, he is well placed to ponder the changes of a tumultuous 15 years.
On November 17th, 1989, he watched Czechoslovak riot police wade into a peaceful demonstration that began in memory of Jan Opletal - killed by Nazi invaders 50 years before - and ended as a march for democracy.
The attack left hundreds of students injured, but steeled Czechoslovak society for a final showdown with its Moscow-backed leaders.
Demonstrations and crippling strikes involving hundreds of thousands of people spread across Czechoslovakia, forcing the communists to negotiate with the Civic Forum group that acted as a mouthpiece for public dissent and was led by Mr Havel.
Less than two weeks after the events of November 17th a new coalition government - including only a handful of communists - was in place, and by the end of December the playwright Havel had become president of Czechoslovakia.
"Most people were surprised by the events of November 17th, even those close to the dissident movement," says Mr Benda (36), then a student leader, now a member of parliament. "They were shocked by the brutality of the police that day." His Civic Democrat party holds 56 parliamentary seats, just one less than the ruling coalition, and is a good bet to win general elections slated for spring 2006.
"We do sense the communists as a danger, but the public at large does, too, so instead of using a protest vote to back them they are increasingly coming over to us," he says.
While Mr Benda and many Czechs deride the Communist Party as an ultimately doomed anachronism, its lingering popularity will be challenged by demonstrators in Prague today, led by a campaign group called "Don't Talk to Communists!"
For Dr Exner, such opponents are themselves sure to slip beneath the wheel of history, rolling relentlessly on towards an inevitably communist future.