Vaclav Havel (1936 - 2011) was a Czech playwright, essayist, dissident and statesman who served as the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic. [1] Banned and repeatedly imprisoned under the communist regime, he was a founding spokesman of the human rights declaration Charter 77 and the central figure of the Velvet Revolution of 1989, after which he was elected head of state. His essays on truth and power are among the most influential dissident writings of the Cold War. [2]
Early life
Havel was born in Prague on 5 October 1936 into a prosperous and culturally prominent family. [1] After the communist takeover of 1948 the family's property was confiscated and his bourgeois background barred him from the humanities education he wanted. He completed an apprenticeship as a laboratory technician, took evening classes to finish secondary school, and studied at the Czech Technical University before taking a correspondence degree in drama at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.
In 1959 he joined the Theatre on the Balustrade in Prague as a stagehand, rising to resident playwright. His first full-length play, The Garden Party, was staged there in 1963, followed by The Memorandum in 1965; both use the theatre of the absurd to satirise bureaucratic language and the way it hollows out individual responsibility. [2]
Dissent
Havel supported the reforms of the Prague Spring in 1968. After the Warsaw Pact invasion his plays were banned in Czechoslovakia, his passport was withdrawn, and he was reduced to manual labour, including a period working in a brewery that supplied material for his play Audience.
In 1977 he became one of the three original spokesmen for Charter 77, a declaration calling on the government to honour the human rights commitments it had accepted at Helsinki. [3] The following year he wrote The Power of the Powerless, an essay arguing that totalitarian systems depend on the daily complicity of ordinary people and can be undermined by the simple decision to live in truth. He was imprisoned several times, serving close to five years in total, most of it between 1979 and 1983; letters written from prison were published as Letters to Olga.
Revolution and presidency
In November 1989, after riot police attacked a student demonstration in Prague, Havel helped found the opposition coalition Civic Forum and became the public face of the mass protests that brought down the communist government within weeks, a transition known as the Velvet Revolution. [4] On 29 December 1989 the Federal Assembly elected him president.
As president he oversaw the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the first free elections in more than forty years, and the transition to a market economy. He opposed the separation of the Czech and Slovak republics and resigned in July 1992 when it became inevitable. After the country divided on 1 January 1993 he was elected president of the new Czech Republic, serving two terms until 2003. [1] He guided the country into NATO in 1999 and was an outspoken advocate for human rights abroad, including in Cuba, Burma and Tibet.
Later years and legacy
After leaving office Havel returned to writing, producing the memoir To the Castle and Back and the play Leaving in 2007, which he later filmed. He suffered from long-standing respiratory illness and died at his country house at Hradecek on 18 December 2011. [1]
Havel received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Charlemagne Prize and dozens of honorary doctorates. Prague's international airport was renamed in his honour in 2012. [2]
