The Prague Post - Havel led morally and politically

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www.praguepost.com Home news Havel led morally and politically

Public outpouring of grief in death celebrates a revolutionary life

Posted: December 21, 2011 By Benjamin Cunningham, Staff Writer

CTK Photo A poet, playwright, philosopher, political leader and patriot, Vclav Havel was lodestar to his country as it shed the yoke of totalitarianism and sought to reassert its place among leading Western democracies - a Herculean goal he worried might be slipping away during his final years. Havel's death at 10:15 a.m. Dec. 18, in the wake of a decade or more of respiratory difficulties that had worsened over the past year, represents a reckoning for Czech citizens who almost unknowingly sidelined the national icon from public discourse in recent years. And yet the spontaneous thousands who turned out to mourn the 75-year-old Havel on Wenceslas Square on the day of his death were seemingly a sign that the love affair between luminary and believers may have spark left. As friend and current Foreign Affairs Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said upon hearing of Havel's death, "Vclav Havel was unfortunately underappreciated in our country in recent years. Perhaps only now are people realizing whom they've lost." On Dec. 18, moments of silence on Wenceslas Square alternated with the nearly deafening sound of jingling keys that recalled the familiar Velvet Revolution ritual. A massive Czech flag was unfurled and held up by the crowd, while Marta Kubiov's freedom anthem Modlitba pro Martu (Prayer for Marta) played. The public braved sleet and present-day skepticism to honor Havel. The government has declared a three-day mourning period to last from Dec. 21-23, concluding with a funeral ceremony at Prague's St. Vitus Cathedral. Flags on all public buildings will be flown at half-staff, and the entire country will pause for one minute of silence at noon Dec. 23. The last president of Czechoslovakia (1989-92) and the first of the Czech Republic (1993-03), Havel is even more notable for an intellectual and moral clarity atypical of political figures of this or any other era. "He was a gift from God that a country as fertile in arts and culture as the Czech Republic will only get once," said Tom Sedlek, an economist and author who formerly worked for Havel. "That is also true in global terms. He

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The Prague Post - Havel led morally and politically

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was a sort of Gandhi, if I may, of the 1980s and '90s." Indeed, Havel became the international face for the wave of liberal democracy that washed over much of the once un-free world, leading some to predict the end of history. His heroic feats of moral courage, which included several stints in communist prisons, made him a fitting symbol for the good-versus-evil narrative that rather simply, but largely accurately, ran through the 1989 collapse of Soviet-backed communism in much of Central and Eastern Europe. It was this heroism that initially drew his countrymen and -women to Havel, but, somewhat ironically, may have later led them to distance, as Havel's uncompromising attitude toward the communist regime with no concern for personal well-being ran counter to the vast majority of his fellow citizens and made him a difficult figure with whom to identify. Much of his late-life moralizing was shrugged off as naivet by the public and mainstream media, even as the intersection of populist politics and money sought to derail the post-communist promise of November 1989. While Havel was clearly far from satisfied with where his country had ended up 22 years after the fall of the regime, in the grand scheme of things, his steady hand proved a calming influence in the transition from a closed to open society and from a command to market economy. This is most starkly illustrated when one compares the Czech Republic with other countries going through similar transitions at a similar time: Russia, Yugoslavia, Romania and even Slovakia. Birth of a nation Born in Prague Oct. 5, 1936, Vclav Havel's learned, upper-class roots saw him targeted by the communist regime once it took power in 1948. He was denied traditional formal schooling after 1951, although he attended night school and had a brief stint studying economics at the Czech Technical University. After two years of mandatory military service, he worked as a stage hand at Old Town's Na zbradl theater. His first full-length play performed in public, The Garden Party, was staged in 1963. The next year he married Olga plchalov, who would remain his wife and confidante during decades of government persecution, until her death in 1996. While Havel was gaining international acclaim for his playwriting during the mid-1960s, it was during the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia where he first drew attention as an opponent of the communist leadership, after providing a radio commentary opposing the Soviet-orchestrated crackdown on free expression in Czechoslovakia during a period that had come to be known as the Prague Spring. This led to the regime banning him from working in theaters, and Havel began to circulate his plays as samizdat, or illegal underground publications that were distributed and recopied by hand. By 1976, he had become one of the leading voices of protest against the communist regime, and after members of the famed psychedelic band The Plastic People of the Universe were arrested, Havel was among a leading group of dissidents who wrote and signed the Charter 77 human rights manifesto - a document the state-run press termed "an anti-state, anti-socialist and demagogic, abusive piece of writing." One year later, Havel's landmark essay "The Power of the Powerless" blew the roof off of the complacency that much of Czechoslovak society was living in, allowing what he termed a "post-totalitarian" regime to succeed in subjugating the population. Several stints in prison followed, as did a severe bout of pneumonia while incarcerated that, along with a heavy smoking habit, contributed to respiratory troubles that would eventually lead to his death. As communism began to come apart at the seams in 1989, Havel was released from prison. The police repression of a student demonstration Nov. 17, 1989 - which itself was meant to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a similar Nazi crackdown - inspired the general public. Three days later 500,000 people demonstrated in Prague and within 10 days a general strike brought the country to a standstill. By the end of the year, Havel had been unanimously voted in as president by the Federal Assembly, a position he would retain in July 1990 free elections. Havel's political rivalry with the free-market economist Vclav Klaus would go on to shape the country for the next 15-plus years. Among Havel's greatest political regrets was the 1993 breakup of Czechoslovakia, which occurred during a brief period where he had resigned as president in protest. As close to Plato's mythical philosopher kings as postmodern society has ever seen, Havel would have shunned the idea that he was anything resembling royalty. As the 2008 documentary film Oban Havel (Citizen Havel) amply and openly illustrates, while a man of unique talent, Havel was clearly enamored of life's simple pleasures. In one scene, he castigates the elaborate foods served at a NATO summit, instead yearning for sausages and

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The Prague Post - Havel led morally and politically

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mustard from his homeland. More often than not, the revealing behind-the-scenes images of the film are emblematic of a man not entirely comfortable with the spotlight as he nervously waivers between neck-ties before each public appearance. In a 2005 diary entry excerpted in the autobiography To the Castle and Back, Havel humorously and typically revealed the self-conscious machinations that emerged during a trip to Washington, D.C. "All - or almost all - politicians here are very suave, particularly the senators," he writes. "They must have first-class barbers who trim their elegant gray hair; they certainly exercise every day, and somebody must give them facials, or - another possibility, they're made of different stuff than we are." Beer was served during the early meetings of Havel's presidential leadership team, and his first trip to Washington in 1990 saw more than one top adviser attend wearing a leather jacket. This irreverence and purity was as much testament to the idealism of the times as it was the man. Quiet confidence As shy as he may have appeared while serving as head of state, his writings were assured. "A specter is haunting Eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called dissent," Havel wrote in "The Power of the Powerless." "This specter has not appeared out of thin air. It is a natural and inevitable consequence of the present historical phase of the system it is haunting. It was born at a time when this system, for a thousand reasons, can no longer base itself on the unadulterated, brutal and arbitrary application of power, eliminating all expressions of nonconformity." Ever the dissident, Havel's rejection of the government-enforced mores of 20th-century Czechoslovakia resurfaced as opposition to the neo-liberal consensus that overran his native land during 1990s privatizations, which undoubtedly most benefited a select few. But nor was Havel a conventional leftist, as he backed his country's swift accession to the NATO military alliance and was even a supporter of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on humanitarian grounds. His public support for the Green Party in recent elections - along with the occasional public statement - expressed clear dissatisfaction with the political status quo. "I have been trying to subject the West, and in fact modern civilization in general, to critical reflections for a very long time now, but I'm not led to do so for any other reason than an attempt to speak the truth and a sincere concern about where humanity is headed," Havel said in To the Castle and Back. Even in his later years, Havel remained an instigator. When artist David ern's controversial sculpture Entropa which mockingly stereotyped all 27 European Union member states and somewhat subversively and accidentally went on display in Brussels to commemorate the 2009 Czech EU presidency - was later unveiled at a Prague art gallery, Havel attended the unveiling and even used the occasion to issue a good-humored jibe at his long-term rival Klaus. Havel's moral authority made him as equally admired by the international establishment as he was by artistic misfits. In 1995, he invited the U.S. Congress-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to take up residence in the former Czechoslovak Communist Federal Assembly building at the top of Wenceslas Square. The broadcaster took up the invitation, broadcasting into 21st-century Central Asia messages similar to what Havel had been drawn to as a late-20th century dissident. At the opening of RFE/RL's new headquarters in 2009, Havel sported a felt jacket that would have done Hugh Hefner proud, cutting a debonair silhouette. Stylish as he may have been, it was with substance - and a willingness to stick to that which is substantive, no matter the consequence - that Havel made his mark on the world. His personal courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds would be admirable even in defeat. But in fact, Havel succeeded, and thus inspires feelings that surpass admiration and approach something much closer to awe. He is survived by his second wife, Dagmar.

Benjamin Cunningham can be reached at bcunningham@praguepost.com.

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