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Václav Havel

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Václav Havel
File:Vaclav havel.jpg
1st President of the Czech Republic
In office
2 February, 1993 – 2 February, 2003
Succeeded byVáclav Klaus
10th President of Czechoslovakia
In office
29 December, 1989 – 20 July, 1992
Preceded byGustáv Husák
Chairman of Civic Forum
In office
19 November, 1989 – 29 December, 1989
Succeeded byJan Urban
Personal details
Born (1936-10-05) October 5, 1936 (age 88)
Czechoslovakia Prague, Czechoslovakia
Political partyCivic Forum
Spouse(s)Olga Šplíchalová, Dagmar Veškrnová
ProfessionPolitician, Writer

Václav Havel, GCB, CC, (IPA: [ˈvaːʦlaf ˈɦavɛl]) (born October 5, 1936 in Prague) is a Czech writer and dramatist. He was the ninth and last President of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and the first President of the Czech Republic (1993-2003).

Biography

Early life

Václav Havel grew up in a well-known entrepreneurial and intellectual family, which was closely linked to the cultural and political events in Czechoslovakia from the 1920s to the 1940s. Because of these links the Czech communist government did not allow Havel to study formally after he had completed his required schooling in 1951. In the first part of the 1950s, the young Havel entered into a four-year apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory assistant and simultaneously took evening classes to complete his secondary education (which he did in 1954). For political reasons he was not accepted into any post-secondary school with a humanities program; therefore, he opted to study at the Faculty of Economics of Czech Technical University. He left this program after two years.

Theatre

The intellectual tradition of his family compelled Václav Havel to pursue the humanitarian values of Czech culture. After military service (1957–59) he worked as a stagehand in Prague (at the Theatre On the Balustrade - Divadlo Na zábradlí) and studied drama by correspondence at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU). His first publicly performed full-length play, besides various vaudeville collaborations, was The Garden Party (1963). Presented in a season of Theatre of the Absurd, at the Balustrade, it won him international acclaim. It was soon followed by Memorandum, one of his best known plays. In 1964, Havel married Olga Šplíchalová, to the despair of his mother.[1]

Entry into political life

Following the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968 he was banned from the theatre and became more politically active. This culminated with the publication of the Charter 77 manifesto, written partially in response to the imprisonment of members of the Czech psychedelic band Plastic People of the Universe.[2] His political activities resulted in multiple stays in prison, the longest being four years, and also subjected him to constant government surveillance and harassment.

After his long prison stay he wrote Largo Desolato, a play about a political writer who fears being sent back to prison. He was also famous for his essays, most particularly for his brilliant articulation of "Post-Totalitarianism" (see Power of the Powerless), a term used to describe the modern social and political order that enabled people to "live within a lie".

A passionate supporter of non-violent resistance, a role in which he has been compared, by ex-US President Bill Clinton, to Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, he became a leading figure in the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the bloodless end to communism in Czechoslovakia. His later opposition to the idea of removing ex-Communists from political life and privileged economic positions raises serious questions about his role in the fall of the Soviet Block.

Presidency

Flag of the president of the Czech Republic
File:Kwas Havel.jpg
President of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel (right) and Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski

On December 29, 1989, as leader of the Civic Forum, he became president by a unanimous vote of the Federal Assembly—an ironic turn of fate for a man who had long insisted that he was uninterested in politics. In this he joined many dissidents of the period, who argued that political change should happen through civic initiatives autonomous from the state, rather than through the state itself. In another move away from the ideals he put forth as a dissident, Havel presided over the privatization of the Czechoslovak economy even though he, like much of the Civic Forum, had previously spoken in support of what is sometimes called a "third way" toward neither Soviet-style socialism nor Western-style capitalism. Western powers approved of this new state of affairs and put pressure on the government to make further changes in the direction of a market capitalist system.

After the free elections of 1990 he retained the presidency. Despite increasing tensions, Havel appeared to have supported the retention of the federation of the Czechs and the Slovaks during the breakup of Czechoslovakia. On July 3 1992 the federal parliament did not elect Havel—the only candidate for presidency—due to a lack of support from Slovak MPs. After the Slovaks issued their Declaration of Independence, he resigned as president on July 20. When the Czech Republic was created, he stood for election as president there on January 26, 1993, and won.

Although Havel has been quite popular throughout his career, his popularity abroad surpassed his popularity at home, and he has been no stranger to controversy and criticism. An extensive general pardon, one of his first acts as a president, was an attempt to both lessen the pressure in overcrowded prisons and release those who may have been falsely imprisoned during the Communist era. It was also based on the his feeling that a corrupt court's decisions cannot be trusted, and that most in prison had not been fairly tried.[3]. Together, this was the majority of the prison population (15996 out of 22365 imprisoned at the time[4]). Critics claimed that this amnesty raised the crime rate. However, according to Havel in his most recent memoir To the Castle and Back, the statistics do not support that allegation, especially as most released would have been released within a year.

At the same time, Havel pushed abolition of the death penalty through the parliament, another very unpopular decision. A third unpopular decision at the time was his refusal to seek out and punish former Communist party members or members of the secret service. [5]

In an interview with Karel Hvížďala (also included in To the Castle and Back), Havel states that he feels his most important accomplishment as president was the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. This proved quite complicated, as the infrastructure created by the pact was so ingrained in the workings of the countries involved and indeed in their general consciousness. It took two years before the Soviet troops finally fully withdrew from Czechoslovakia.

Following a legal dispute with his sister-in-law, Havel decided to sell his 50% stake in the Lucerna Palace on Wenceslas Square, a legendary dance hall built by his grandfather Václav M. Havel. In a transaction mastered by Marián Čalfa, Havel sold the estate to Václav Junek, a former communist spy in France and leader of soon-to-be-bankrupt conglomerate Chemapol Group, who later openly admitted he bribed politicians of Czech Social Democratic Party.[6]

In December 1996 the chain-smoking Havel was diagnosed as having lung cancer.[7] The disease reappeared two years later. In 1997, less than a year after the death of his wife Olga, who was beloved almost as a saint by the Czech people,[8] Havel remarried to actress Dagmar Veškrnová. That year he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca.

The former political prisoner was instrumental in the transition of NATO from being an anti-Warsaw Pact alliance, to what it is today. He advocated vigorously for the expansion of the military alliance into Eastern Europe, including the Czech Republic [9].

Havel was re-elected president in 1998 and underwent a colostomy when on holiday in Innsbruck. Havel left office after his second term as Czech president ended on February 2, 2003; Václav Klaus, one of his greatest political opponents, was elected his successor on February 28, 2003. Margaret Thatcher writes of the two men in her foreign policy treatise, Statecraft, reserving greater respect for Havel, whose dedication to democracy and defying the Communists earned her admiration.

Samuel Beckett's play Catastrophe is dedicated to him, as are Tom Stoppard's Professional Foul (1977) and Rock 'n' Roll (2006) and Sonia Sanchez's "Poem for July 4, 1994."

Post-presidential career

In 2003, Havel was the inaugural recipient of Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award for his work in promoting human rights. In 2002, he was the third recipient of the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award presented by the Prague Society for International Cooperation.

A prominent figure in the fight against terrorism, Havel is co-chair of the Committee on the Present Danger which aims to "fight terrorism and the ideologies that drive it".

In November and December 2006, Havel spent eight weeks as a visiting artist-in-residence "organized by the Arts Initiative at Columbia University," featuring "lectures, interviews, conversations, classes, performances, and panels center[ing] on his life and ideas," including a public "conversation" with former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Concurrently, the Untitled Theater Company #61 launched a Havel Festival, the first complete festival of his plays in various venues throughout New York City, in celebration of his 70th birthday.[10]

In May 2007, Havel's memoir of his experiences as President, To the Castle and Back, was released. The book mixes an interview in the style of Disturbing the Peace with actual memos he send to his staff with modern diary entries and recollections.

Havel's first new play since before the Presidency, Leaving (Odchazeni), was tentatively scheduled to premiere at the National Theater of Prague in June 2008. The play is based partly on King Lear; however, it appears that the wait will be prolonged following the National Theatre's refusal to allow his wife to play the lead role. Meanwhile other theatres are lining up to offer their stages instead, including Havel's former theatre, Divadlo na Zábradlí (Theatre on the Balustrade).

On 4 August 2007, Havel met with members of the Belarus Free Theatre at his summer cottage in the Czech Republic, in a show of his continuing support, which has been instrumental in its attaining international recognition and its membership in the European Theatrical Convention.[11][12]

Works

Plays

Václav Havel speaking at the opening ceremonies of the IMF/World Bank Meeting on September 26, 2000
  • An Evening with the Family (1960)
  • Motormorphosis (1960)
  • The Garden Party (1963)
  • The Memorandum (1965)
  • The Increased Difficulty of Concentration (1968)
  • Butterfly on the Antennna (1968)
  • Guardian Angel (1968)
  • Conspirators (1971)
  • The Beggar's Opera (1975)
  • Mountain Hotel (1976)
  • Audience (1978)
  • Private View (1978)
  • Protest (1978)
  • Mistake (1983)
  • Largo desolato (1985)
  • Temptation (1986)
  • Redevelopment (1987)
  • Tomorrow (1988)
  • Leaving (2007)

Non-fiction Books

  • The Power of the Powerless (1985)
  • Letters to Olga (1988)
  • Disturbing the Peace (1991)
  • Open Letters (1991)
  • Summer Meditations (1992/93)
  • Towards a Civil Society (1994)
  • The Art of the Impossible (1998)
  • To the Castle and Back (2007)

Cultural allusions and interests

  • Havel is mentioned in a toast in La Vie Boheme in the American musical Rent, by Jonathan Larson.
  • Havel was a major supporter of the Plastic People of the Universe, becoming a close friend of its members, such as its manager Ivan Martin Jirous and guitarist/vocalist Paul Wilson (who later became Havel's English translator and biographer) and a great fan of the rock band The Velvet Underground, sharing mutual respect with the principal singer-songwriter Lou Reed.[13][14]
  • Havel is also a great supporter and fan of jazz and frequented such Prague clubs as Radost FX and the Reduta Jazz Club, where President Bill Clinton played the saxophone when Havel brought him there.[15]
  • The period involving Havel's role in the Velvet Revolution and his ascendancy to the presidency is dramatized in part in the play Rock 'n' Roll, by Czech-born English playwright Tom Stoppard.
  • The song Remember My Name by the rock group Toy Matinee is "loosely dedicated" to Havel.
  • A character in the novel-turned-anime series Trinity Blood is named Vaclav Havel, in one of many cultural references to historical figures. He is a priest in Caterina's AX Agency in the Vatican, alongside main protagonist Abel Nightroad.

References

  • Vaclav Havel by Eda Kriseová, St Martin's Press 1993 ISBN 0312103174
  • Acts of Courage by Carol Rocamora, Smith and Kraus 2004 ISBN 1575253445
  • Vaclav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts by John Keane, Basic Books 2000, ISBN 0465037194 (sample chapter [1])
  • Interpreting Václav Havel by Walter H. Capp, a Cross Currents study [2]
  • Vaclav Havel: Civic Responsibility in the Postmodern Age, by James F. Pontuso, Rowman & Littlefield 2004, ISBN 0-7425-2256-3 [3]

Notes

  1. ^ David Remnick, "Exit Havel", The New Yorker 10 February, 2003, accessed 29 April, 2007.
  2. ^ Richie Unterberger, "The Plastic People of the Universe", richieunterberger.com 26 February, 2007, accessed 29 April, 2007.
  3. ^ Havel's New Year's address
  4. ^ [http://www.novinky.cz/domaci/klaus-vezne-zklamal--amnestie-nebude_6781_210l8.html.
  5. ^ Vaclav Havel, To the Castle and Back
  6. ^ Paul Berman, "The Poet of Democracy and His Burdens", New York Times Magazine 11 May, 1997 (original inc. cover photo), as rpt. in English translation at Newyorske listy (New York Herald), accessed 29 April, 2007.
  7. ^ "Vaclav Havel: from 'bourgeois reactionary' to president", author not mentioned, Radio Prague (the international service of Czech radio)
  8. ^ "Vaclav Havel: End of an era" by Richard Allen Greene, BBC News online, 9 October 2003
  9. ^ http://www.csdr.org/96Book/Havel.htm
  10. ^ Havel at Columbia; "Celebrating the Life and Art of Václav Havel: New York City, October through December 2006".
  11. ^ "Belarus Free Theatre Meet Vaclav Havel", press release, Belarus Free Theatre, 13 Aug. 2007, accessed 31 Aug. 2007.
  12. ^ Michael Batiukov, "Belarus 'Free Theatre' is Under Attack by Militia in Minsk, Belarus", American Chronicle, 22 Aug. 2007, accessed 31 Aug. 2007.
  13. ^ Biographies and bibliographies; e.g., "Havel at Columbia: Bibliography: Human Rights Archive", accessed April 28, 2007.
  14. ^ Sam Beckwith, "Václav Havel & Lou Reed", Prague.tv 24 January, 2005, updated 27 January, 2005, accessed 26 April, 2007.
  15. ^ Biographies and bibliographies; e.g., "Havel at Columbia: Bibliography: Human Rights Archive", accessed April 28, 2007; Prague Travel: Nightlife, accessed April 29, 2007.
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