Those in support of democracy and human rights have lost a star with the passing of Vaclav Havel. The playwright, poet and dissident who rose to become the last president of Czechoslovakia and first president of the Czech Republic, died on Sunday, December 18, at the age of 75.
Havel began his career as a writer, eventually producing over 20 plays and nonfiction works. In the 1960s, first within the creative exuberance of the Prague Spring and then through his participation in the founding of Charter 77, Havel inhabited the worlds of literature and politics, using both his dramatic works and essays to shed light on the injustices and absurdities within the communist system.
Eventually imprisoned for his views, he emerged as a dissident leader at a time when political change swept through the region, resulting in the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Havel’s strong belief in non-violent resistance was evident in his leadership of the revolution, which brought a peaceful end to communism in Czechoslovakia.
Havel led the Czech Republic through its transition from communism to a multi-party system. He was president of Czechoslovakia from December 29, 1989, to July 20, 1992, and then president of the Czech Republic from February 2, 1993, to February 2, 2003.
Always an advocate of individual choice, Havel believed in the power of the people. His 1978 essay, The Power of the Powerless, called upon his fellow countrymen to “live within the truth.” This call for profound existential and moral changes in society represented a rejection of ideological rituals and habits of totalitarianism and captured the spirit of a generation of thinkers and activists that embraced personal freedom and democracy in bringing the end to communism in Eastern Europe.
In this essay he wrote, “The essential aims of life are present naturally in every person. In everyone there is some longing for humanity’s rightful dignity, for moral integrity, for free expression of being.” This re-assertion of morality into politics was as simple as it was profound.
As a creative and philosophical voice, Havel inspired countless young people to believe in the power of ideas.
“He was and will remain a seminal voice in the cause for freedom and individual liberty in our post-totalitarian, post-modern world,” Michael Svetlik, IFES Vice President for Programs, said.
As the Czech Republic mourns a national hero, IFES feels the loss of a man who understood not only the ethos of the Czech people, but also the deepest desires of the human heart: to be free and have a say in the way they are governed.