Historical Figure
Václav Havel
1936–2011
Last president of Czechoslovakia and first president of the Czech Republic (1936–2011)
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Biography
Václav Havel was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992, prior to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 31 December, before he became the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. He was the first democratically elected president of either country after the fall of communism. As a writer of Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays and memoirs.
In Their Own Words (5)
Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.
Letter to the downthrown Czechoslovak Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubček (August 1969), as translated in Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 5 : The Politics of Hope, p. 115 , 1986
The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.
Letters to Olga (1988), p. 237 , 1988
I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.
Speech of October 1989, accepting a peace prize , 1989
A genuinely fundamental and hopeful improvement in "systems" cannot happen without a significant shift in human consciousness.
Ch. 1 : Growing Up "Outside", p. 17 , 1986
As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.
Ch. 1 : Growing Up "Outside", p. 11 , 1986
Timeline
The story of Václav Havel, told in moments.
Already established as a playwright known for absurdist works like The Garden Party and The Memorandum. After the Soviet invasion crushed the Prague Spring, he was blacklisted. His plays could no longer be performed in Czechoslovakia.
Co-authored Charter 77, a human rights manifesto challenging the Communist regime. It was signed by 242 people. He became the public face of Czech dissent. The secret police followed him everywhere.
Imprisoned for nearly four years for "subversion of the republic." Wrote Letters to Olga, philosophical reflections addressed to his wife, from his prison cell. The letters were smuggled out and published.
Elected president of Czechoslovakia after the Velvet Revolution. A playwright who'd been in prison ten months earlier was now running the country. He'd helped topple the regime through Civic Forum without a single shot fired.
Died at his country home in northern Bohemia at 75. Served as the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first of the Czech Republic. World leaders mourned him. His funeral filled Prague's St. Vitus Cathedral.
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