{"id":286,"date":"2014-01-03T03:26:43","date_gmt":"2014-01-03T08:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/diplomacyresearch\/?p=286"},"modified":"2014-05-01T11:07:20","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T15:07:20","slug":"vaclav-havel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/diplomacyresearch\/2014\/01\/03\/vaclav-havel\/","title":{"rendered":"Vaclav Havel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Vaclav_havel\"<\/a>Vaclav Havel was a dissident playwright, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic. [1]<\/a> According to Iva K. Naffziger, \u201cHe led his country from the defeat of communism in 1989, to its first free elections in 1990, to its economic revival, and to its reincorporation into the international community\u2014into NATO and soon the EU.\u201d [2]<\/a> Havel was born to a privileged affluent Prague family in 1936, but he lived under persecution for the better part of his years. The Communists expropriated his family\u2019s property, blocked his education, banned his writings, and imprisoned him. [3]<\/a> However, in his essay \u201cThe Power of the Powerless\u201d Havel admitted that under the communist regime citizens were forced to “live within a lie”. Describing his role as a dissident, he noted that he never decided to become a dissident, \u201cWe have been transformed into them, without quite knowing how; sometimes we have ended up in prison without precisely knowing how. We simply went ahead and did certain things that we felt we ought to do, and that seemed to us decent to do, nothing more nor less.” [4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Havel was arrested in 1979 and imprisoned for about 5 years for his participation in a citizens\u2019 initiative called Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Persecuted (VONS) and the Charter 77 Movement.\u00a0\u00a0 The VONS documented illegal harassment of citizens and issued alerts regarding persons prosecuted and imprisoned for exercising their constitutional rights against the communist regime. Havel believed strongly that citizens should exercise their right to freedom of speech and association even if such behavior was punished by the state.\u00a0 During his trial, he openly admitted his activities and argued that they were legal. [5]<\/a> \u201cDissidenthood\u201d brought Havel three prison sentences, a ban on his plays, and fame and sympathy abroad.\u00a0\u00a0 Havel said, \u201cWhen I remembered the more than 500 times in my life that they tortured me with endless interrogations, how they jailed me, undertook terrorist raids into my apartment, persecuted all my relatives and friends, destroyed my car . . . it is a sad result of all this to receive a piece of paper where someone states that I was not a knowing collaborator.\u201d [6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Before Havel\u2019s imprisonment, the Czechoslovak secret police followed and watched his every move. The secret police occupied a property next to his house and built a watchtower on it, from which they observed him at all times and even while he walked his dog.\u00a0 These led to many dissidents escape into exiles, but Havel and a handful of others refused to budge. Havel was later sentenced to long term in prison with hard labor, welding metal gratings and stripping insulation from wires.\u00a0 Havel said that the work \u201cwasn\u2019t too bad, as long as he could get used to the cold and endless filth\u201d.\u00a0 However, when he failed to finish his work, he would be punished with reduced rations. Havel and other prisoners were also beaten and threatened with execution; he suffered from pneumonia because of his exposure to cold and would have died if he had stayed longer in prison. He was released as a direct result of international pressure. [7]<\/a><\/p>\n

Havel wrote to his wife several times while he was in prison, the famous \u201cLetters to Olga\u201d were a collection of up to 150 letters he wrote weekly to his wife. These letters were written by Havel under strict prison rules, he was forbidden from writing about life in prison or making jokes. [8] <\/a>Before Havel\u2019s trials, he was given the option to emigrate from the country, but he declined and chose to remain in Czechoslovakia.\u00a0 Havel noted that he did not want to walk away from something from which it was not decent to walk away, and that he would disappoint many people.\u00a0\u00a0 He further said that he was not trying to overvalue himself and his importance, but that he was a realist and that so many eyes were watching him\u00a0 to see his next steps. [9]<\/a><\/p>\n

Havel\u2019s uncompromising resistance to an oppressive regime constitutes his greatest legacy.\u00a0 Havel once said, \u201cI came across a fairy-tale hero, a boy who, in the name of the good, beat his head against the wall of a castle inhabited by evil kings, until the wall fell down and he himself became king.\u201d [10] <\/a>He further noted that \u201cthe emperor had no clothes\u201d [11] <\/a>which explains how his rule replaced his oppressors\u2019 rule. In the \u201cThe Power of the Powerless\u201d, Havel underlined that \u201cif the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth\u201d [12] <\/a>\u00a0Havel\u2019s everyday life and work were hindered by the communist authority but he gained courage in the face of hardship. [13]<\/a> Havel wished to preserve the unity of multi-ethnic Czechoslovakia[14]<\/a> he resigned as president after Slovaks issued their Declaration of Independence, he did not want to preside over the country’s breakup or confront Slovaks. However, when the Czech Republic was created as one of two successor states, he stood for election and became its first president on 26 January 1993.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> \u201cReading V\u00e1clav Havel from His Jail Cell | FrontPage Magazine,\u201d accessed December 22, 2013, http:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/2011\/daniel-flynn\/reading-vaclav-havel-from-his-jail-cell\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> \u201cFrom the Prison to the Castle: The Legacy of V\u00e1clav Havel | Hoover Institution,\u201d accessed December 22, 2013, http:\/\/www.hoover.org\/publications\/hoover-digest\/article\/6684<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> \u201cReading V\u00e1clav Havel from His Jail Cell | FrontPage Magazine.\u201d accessed December 22, 2013, http:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/2011\/daniel-flynn\/reading-vaclav-havel-from-his-jail-cell\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> \u201cTo Reform or Not to Reform, before or after the Election – That Is the Question – The Nation,\u201d accessed December 30, 2013, http:\/\/www.nationmultimedia.com\/opinion\/To-reform-or-not-to-reform-before-or-after-the-ele-30223090.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[5] <\/a>\u00a0\u201cFrom the Prison to the Castle: The Legacy of V\u00e1clav Havel | Hoover Institution.\u201d accessed December 22, 2013, http:\/\/www.hoover.org\/publications\/hoover-digest\/article\/6684<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> \u00a0\u201cFrom the Prison to the Castle: The Legacy of V\u00e1clav Havel | Hoover Institution.\u201d accessed December 22, 2013 \u00a0http:\/\/www.hoover.org\/publications\/hoover-digest\/article\/6684.<\/p>\n

[7] <\/a>\u00a0\u201cVaclav Havel,\u201d accessed December 22, 2013, http:\/\/www.arts.gla.ac.uk\/Slavonic\/Havel1.htm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[8] <\/a>\u00a0\u201cVaclav Havel,\u201d accessed December 22, 2013, http:\/\/www.arts.gla.ac.uk\/Slavonic\/Havel1.htm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[9] <\/a>\u00a0\u201cFrom the Prison to the Castle: The Legacy of V\u00e1clav Havel | Hoover Institution.\u201d accessed December 22, 2013, http:\/\/www.hoover.org\/publications\/hoover-digest\/article\/6684.<\/a><\/p>\n

[10] <\/a>\u00a0\u201cFrom the Prison to the Castle: The Legacy of V\u00e1clav Havel | Hoover Institution.\u201d accessed December 22, 2013, \u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/www.hoover.org\/publications\/hoover-digest\/article\/6684.<\/p>\n

[11] <\/a>\u00a0\u201cVaclav Havel: The Emperor Has No Clothes Webcast (Library of Congress),\u201d accessed December 30, 2013, http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/today\/cyberlc\/feature_wdesc.php?rec=3697<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[12] <\/a>\u00a0\u201cThe Power of the Powerless (Routledge Revivals): Citizens Against the State … – Vaclav Havel – Google Books,\u201d accessed December 30, 2013,<\/p>\n

[13] <\/a>\u00a0\u201cFrom the Prison to the Castle: The Legacy of V\u00e1clav Havel | Hoover Institution.\u201d accessed December 22, 2013, http:\/\/www.hoover.org\/publications\/hoover-digest\/article\/6684.<\/p>\n

[14] <\/a>\u00a0\u201cReading V\u00e1clav Havel from His Jail Cell | FrontPage Magazine.\u201d accessed December 22, 2013, http:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/2011\/daniel-flynn\/reading-vaclav-havel-from-his-jail-cell\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vaclav Havel was a dissident playwright, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic. According to Iva K. Naffziger, \u201cHe led his country from the defeat of communism in 1989, to its first free elections in 1990, to its economic revival, and to its reincorporation into the international community\u2014into NATO and soon the EU.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1816,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[31,32,30,34,29,35,33],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forgiving-prisoners-profiles","tag-communist-regime","tag-czechoslovakia","tag-dissident","tag-freedom","tag-prison","tag-resistance","tag-trial"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/diplomacyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/diplomacyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/diplomacyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/diplomacyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1816"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/diplomacyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/diplomacyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/diplomacyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions\/777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/diplomacyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/diplomacyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/diplomacyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}