Today, Czech playwright, dissident, and president Václav Havel died at the age of 75.
There are plenty of obituaries around, I thought I’d share my impressions. Havel was the first president of post-communist Czechoslovakia and then the first president of the Czech Republic. He shaped the Velvet Revolution in November 1989 and was a key figure in the dissident movement referred to as Charta '77, in a time when dissidents in Czechoslovakia were few and far between after the brutal invasion of 1968.
Havel was a gracious and mild-mannered man, by all accounts (although probably not the ‘reluctant president’ that he claimed to be - who is reluctantly president for almost 13 years?). What I find particularly inspiring is his views on the nature of the communist regime, at the hands of which he suffered so terribly. Rather than blame those in charge, Havel pointed his critique at society at large. In his Power of the Powerless (Moc Bezmocných), one of his key dissident works, Havel describes how a greengrocer lies everyday by placing a sign in his window that says ‘Proletarians of the world, unite’. The greengrocer does not believe that the proletarians of the world should unite nor that that is what is going on in Czechoslovakia at the time. He places the sign in the shop window to stay out of trouble. This, in Havel’s view, makes him complicit. In his New Year’s Address of 1990, weeks after becoming president, this is what he tells the Czechs and the Slovaks - all of us are responsible in our own small ways for over 40 years of communist rule; we cannot place the blame on someone else, the Communist Party or the Soviet Union, and act as though that absolves us. We must look within ourselves to understand how we all are responsible for communism.
I have read a lot about the way people suffered at the hands of the communists. I am not from Eastern Europe myself but often when I read such accounts my blood boils and I feel angry. I find it truly inspirational that someone who spent years of his life in prison and decades being persecuted can be so forgiving and unvindictive. As president, Havel later went on to oppose legislation that targeted former communists and people who collaborated with the secret service, arguing that it was time to draw a ‘thick line’ under the past and move on. His critics opposed him, saying he was too idealistic and that communism had to be rooted out entirely, that the revolution was not yet over - and they were probably right. Still, such grace, mildness, and forgiveness are rare in a politician, and admirable. Whenever Havel signed his name, he drew a little heart.
Today, we have lost a voice for love in politics.