Václav Havel (1936-2011)
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Václav Havel was a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia (1989–92) and the first President of the Czech Republic (1993–2003).
Vaclav Havel's death is a reminder of something which parts of modern Europe – and perhaps Britain in particular – are in danger of taking for granted, at best, and, at worst, of forgetting altogether. We live in a time in which an increasingly introverted and fearful Europe is becoming synonymous with failure and impossibility, in which political leadership is treated with contempt and exasperation, and in which politics is all too often dismissed as corrupt, craven and irrelevant. Havel's personality and career, though, were the antithesis of all of these gloomy current prejudices.
At his best, President Havel was a genuinely national leader with a dynamic understanding of Europe, a politician whose vision and wit embraced not just the art of the possible but of the impossible too, and a civic leader whose sense of what is worthwhile in life transcended materialism – massively important though that was for eastern Europeans whose aspirations had been denied for so long – to embrace the imaginative and intellectual. In an era in which Europe is now so often spoken of with a sneer, he is a reminder of a very recent time when Europe embodied something noble and liberating which was eagerly shared – even here.
The playwright turned president came from a part of Europe, the then Czechoslovakia, which in the 19th and early 20th centuries had been integral to the evolution of European politics, culture and economics, but in which, as Havel himself put it, the clock had stopped after the second world war. As a result, the two halves of Europe lost touch with each other. No one, arguably, did more than Havel, first as a dissident and then as a president, to try to bring them back together. His efforts were only partly successful, but it is to him, more than to any other leader, that we owe not just the peaceful overthrow of communism in the former Czechoslovakia, but the later peaceful divorce between the Czech Republic and Slovakia and, every bit as important, the active embrace of the former eastern bloc by the European Union. Even today, this ranks as a mighty historical achievement by any leader, never mind by one who thought of himself primarily as a writer.
Havel belonged to a generation which, having witnessed the Soviet repression of Hungary in 1956 and of Czechoslovakia itself in 1968, recognised that, for them, socialism was both a failure and an incubus. For years after 1968, the dissident path which Havel took in Franz Kafka's homeland appeared both hopeless and dangerous. As the Soviet empire finally faltered, however, Havel's moral authority became one of the keys which unlocked a better future. Of the four emblematic eastern European figures of the era – the others were Mikhail Gorbachev, Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa – Havel, as the only true liberal of the four, was the one who could both speak for his own people and at the same time command support on the left and right both at home and abroad.
Not even Havel was able to sustain that effort indefinitely. As politicians do, he became unpopular, unable to resist the forces of consumerism and nationalism alike. At this sad time of his too early death, Havel may appear to belong to a long lost era, whose spirited defiance of Soviet-imposed totalitarianism and engaging civic optimism in the transitional post-totalitarian years have nothing to offer to the Czech or European experience of today. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. All Europeans, Czechs as well as British, belong to relatively small nation states which share an interlocked global destiny as power and wealth shift from Europe and North America to Asia and the south. All have to reconcile their patriotism with globalising pressures without collapsing into nationalist rivalries. And all have to be open to the new, the brave and the difficult without abandoning the moral, the wise and the treasured. In that sense, Vaclav Havel's Europe belongs not to the past but the future. Guardian
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He stood by what he believed in even when the Communists imprisoned him. He was the figurehead that helped to overthrow their repressive regime.
In my younger more naive days I believed in Socialism, but then met the love of my life a wonderful Czech woman from Olomouc who lives and works in the UK.
She educated me in the realities of living under the Communist Regime, she told me how her father had to pay a communist party official nearly half his savings so the her older sister could train as an accountant, this was also the case with my partner.
My partners father was also a brilliant accountant but he was never allowed to be promoted because he refused to join the Communist Party and would not give up his Roman Catholic faith.
This is a just one example of many, of the corruption, Bureaucracy and repression which the Czech people had to endure.
Unfortunately many on the left have never had to live under the regime they promote. If they did I think their views would quickly change.
My thoughts go out to Havel's family and the Czech people.
RIP.
Let us not forget that he was firstly a writer, a courageous profession under communism, before he became a politician because of force of circumstance.
It is sad that two courageous men, writers, facing different challenges but facing them with courage and wisdom, have gone in this short span of time.
"Socialism and capitalism have long since been beside the point. The task is one of resisting vigilantly the irrational momentum of anonymous, impersonal and inhuman power - the power of ideologies, systems, apparat, bureaucracy, artificial language and political slogans. We must resist their complex and wholly alienating pressure, whether it takes the form of consumption, advertising, repression, technology or cliché. We must draw our standards from the natural world, not be ashamed that we are capable of love, friendship, solidarity, sympathy and tolerance: we must set these fundamental dimensions of our humanity free from their private exile and accept them as the only genuine starting point of meaningful human community"
His kindred spirits are in the Occupy movement.
When you look at that generation of leaders - Gorbachev, Walesa, Havel (sorry, I can't include the Pope) - and think of the generation that preceded them (Willy Brandt etc) you have to wonder what has happened to politicians today. Who will we remember in 20 years' time - Osborne? Berlusconi? Clegg? No wonder our economies are all screwed.
The fact that this version of communism failed does NOT mean that:
a) Capitalism is not going to fail catastrophically. It does fail today. It is already an economy built on piles of debt and if this debt is removed hundreds of millions of jobs funded by this debt will magically disappear
b) A different multi-party, democratic, programmatically planned via the manifestos of political parties, and totally accountable socialist economy for the benefit of all is not possible.
c) People will not demand an alternative to Capitalism when society and ecosystem come closer to collapse because of the stresses and strains of competition we see today.
It took a few attempts before people were able to fly!
Be patient ... it is only a matter of time.
As they used to say:
We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.
What next, an alternative obituary on the dear leader in Korea saying that he had some good points – that he brought equality to all its citizens and gave them pride in being a nuclear power. Ignore the equality issue – men, women and children are equally treated who can enjoy starvation together while the elite enjoy every luxury (only no knows this and anyone who leaks this truth is killed or sent to a labour camp).
Prague Spring has remained a fixed image in the minds of people around the world.
All kinds of people can become politician. But is that why Czecho-Slovakia was split?
The world's a stage.
"While he was deprived of his freedom, the Union of the Left - socialist and communist - was in power in France with the support of our pathetic marxist 'intellectuals.' The socialists, who for so many years had no problems in allying themselves with the communists, should stop crying crocodile tears over Vaclav Havel's death. [Well-known French radical socialiist of that era] Jack Lang, who was in North Korea not long ago and who is a well-known figure in Cuba, would be better advised to mourn camerade Kim Jong Il......"
'Nuff said.
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