Czech Republic: Remembering Vaclav Havel

Just as Americans will never forget the day President Kennedy died, Czechs will always remember when they heard the news that Vaclav Havel was gone, said Ondrej Neff in the Prague Lidove Noviny. Havel had been ill for years, suffering from lung problems first contracted during one of his stints in a communist-era prison and exacerbated by years of chain-smoking, so his death was not unexpected. Still, it struck us with pitiless force. He was our moral guide and our easygoing beer buddy. A playwright whose absurdist works mocked the authoritarianism and ugliness of the Czechoslovak Communist regime, Havel became the leader of the dissident movement after a crackdown on the rock group Plastic People of the Universe spurred him to openly denounce the regime. In his most famous work, the essay “The Power of the Powerless,” he explained that he was “thrown into it by a personal sense of responsibility.” Even after he led the Velvet Revolution and became president, he was still best known for his slogan, “Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred.”

Yet Czechs didn’t always love him, said Jindrich Sidlo in Hospodarske Noviny. “In the beginning there was a certain exotic fascination with the rock ’n’ roll president” who invited the Rolling Stones to the castle and hung out with the Dalai Lama. But over his years as president, his popularity sank as Czechs grew weary of his lecturing us to be better people. He “talked constantly about things that were not exactly easy to hear: the need to live according to morality, conscience, and responsibility, and the dangers of racism and corruption.”

Havel was the first to admit his flaws, said Adam Michnik in the Warsaw Gazeta Wyborcza. He had a unique “synthesis of modesty and bravery, and an ironic, even sarcastic, view of himself.” A great friend to me and other Polish dissidents, he inspired us with his utter “freedom from pride, hatred, and fanaticism.” If he was disappointed in Czechs, in the way they chose the materialistic path marked out by his hard-nosed successor, Vaclav Klaus, he was just as disappointed in his own limitations.

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“Many will ask what made Havel exceptional,” said Jiri Pehe in the Toronto Star. “The answer is simple: decency. He was a decent, principled man.” Havel had no personal gain in mind when he spoke out against communism. In his view he had no choice but to fight against “an indecent, immoral system.” And that’s how he governed. He could not easily be labeled left or right. Against the wishes of his people, he supported the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 because he felt the world had to stand up to brutality. His “first commitment was to common decency and the common good, not to holding power.” That kind of leader is no more.