A rchive Date
[ 11-06-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Czechoslovakia ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/mansur_london.html
Vaclav Havel made a difference
SALIM MANSUR, For the London Free Press
2003-06-11
Earlier this year, when the world's attention was concentrated on the impending war in Iraq, few took note of an end to the most remarkable political career of Vaclav Havel.
Havel was propelled by the "velvet revolution" of 1989, which he epitomized, from being a lowly dissident playwright to becoming a popularly acclaimed president of the post-communist Federal Republic of Czechoslovakia.
The leaders of the former Soviet Union crushed in 1968 what came to be known as the Prague Spring, an attempt to put a human face on totalitarian communist rule.
Among those seeking to reform one-party communist dictatorship behind the Iron Curtain was Havel.
In 1975, Havel penned a letter to Gustav Husak, the president of Czechoslovakia at the time. He wrote, "So far you and your government have chosen the easy way out for yourselves, and the most dangerous road for society: the path of inner decay for the sake of outward appearances; of deadening life for the sake of increasing uniformity; of deepening the spiritual and moral crisis of our society, and ceaselessly degrading human dignity, for the puny sake of protecting your own power."
This ordinary act of writing a letter was explosive in consequence, and this simple example of speaking truth to power still reverberates around the world in those countries where freedom remains chained.
In 1977, Havel co-founded Charter 77, a human rights group demanding the Czechoslovak government abide by the Helsinki Agreement of 1975 as a signatory and respect the political, economic, cultural and religious rights of its citizens. He was thrice imprisoned, but his influence continued to grow.
Then came 1989, 21 years after the Soviet tanks rolled into Prague, and democratic revolution swept across Eastern Europe as a prelude to the eventual disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Havel was then a leading member of the Civic Forum, and with the spread of the "velvet revolution" was elected president in December 1989.
Havel was re-elected president of Czechoslovakia and, when that country split in 1992, he was elected president of the Czech Republic in 1993, and then again for a second final five- year term in 1998.
As a dissident intellectual, one devoted to question the nature of political power, Havel was the most unusual political leader of our time. He questioned authority even as he sought to govern and consolidate democracy in his relatively small country. Havel's writings are among the most revealing insights into the corruptions of totalitarian power.
Because he understood so well the evil nature of dictatorships, he was outspoken in support of the war against Saddam Hussein and for the freedom of Iraqi people. Havel's voice carried a moral urgency, reminding his listeners worldwide of politics as ethics of responsibility.
His book, The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice, is one small collection of his speeches and essays available in English. It should be found in every home, and be read and discussed attentively.
Timothy Garton Ash, in History of the Present, chronicled the emergence of post-communist Europe. About Havel's meditations on politics, Garton Ash wrote, "his essays, lectures and prison letters from the last quarter-century are, taken altogether, among the most vivid, sustained and searching explorations of the moral and political responsibility of the intellectual produced anywhere in Europe."
In a 1990 address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, Havel summed up his political philosophy born of life experience in words that could have been spoken by Pope John Paul II: "Consciousness precedes Being, and not the other way around, as Marxists claim."
And then Havel observed, "the salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human modesty, and in human responsibility."
Havel has returned to private life and his quiet reflections as a writer. But he has left behind in his career another testimony that ordinary people with conviction and courage can make a difference for their world, and leave it somewhat better than when they found it.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Wednesdays. Copyright © The London Free Press 2001,2002,2003
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