In Spring 1990, Czechoslovak artist and cartoonist Vladimir Rencin sends this message that is was time to stop the flag-waving euphoria surrounding the revolution's victory and to get to the hard work of rebuilding the country. The caption reads: "It's high time for you to climb down and get to work! The garden is neglected, the latrine" (actually a Czech word for an open-air refuse pit) "is overflowing, and the shack is about to fall down."

[description as stated in the guide for Goodbye, Comrade: An Exhibition of Images from the Revolutions of ’89 and the Collapse of Communism, March 10 – December 30, 1999]

Vladimir Rencin. “…Climb Down and Get to Work.” Reproduced by permission from The Gelman Library, Friends of the GW Libraries, the National Security Archive, and the Woodrow Wilson Center’s CWIHP, Goodbye, Comrade: An Exhibition of Images from the Revolutions of ’89 and the Collapse of Communism, March 10 – December 30, 1999 (Washington D.C.: The George Washington University, 1999), 19.