Ted Torgerson
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Here is an article about Havel from MSNBC:
Vaclav Havel addresses a joint session of Congress, February, 1990.
Czechs joined their leaders and foreign politicians Sunday in paying tribute to Vaclav Havel, who led the 1989 Velvet Revolution that peacefully toppled communism in the former Czechoslovakia.
A black flag flew over Prague Castle, the presidential seat, while Czechs lit candles to remember the the dissident playwright who helped kick off the fall of the Iron Curtain and then served as president of Czechoslovakia, and later the Czech Republic.
"Mr. President, thank you for democracy," read a note placed at the monument to the revolution in downtown Prague.
Havel, the dissident playwright who wove theater into politics to peacefully bring down communism in Czechoslovakia and become a hero of the epic struggle that ended the Cold War, died Sunday morning at his weekend house. He was 75.
He was comforted in his last moments by his wife Dagmar and several nuns, Reuters reported.
Havel was his country's first democratically elected president after the nonviolent "Velvet Revolution" that ended four decades of repression by a regime he ridiculed as "Absurdistan."
As president, he oversaw the country's bumpy transition to democracy and a free-market economy, as well its peaceful 1993 breakup into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Even out of office, the diminutive Czech remained a world figure. He was part of the "new Europe" — in the coinage of then-U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — of ex-communist countries that stood up for the U.S. when the democracies of "old Europe" opposed the 2003 Iraq invasion.
A former chain-smoker, Havel had a history of chronic respiratory problems dating back to his years in communist jails. He was hospitalized in Prague on Jan. 12, 2009, with an unspecified inflammation, and had developed breathing difficulties after undergoing minor throat surgery.
'Truth and love must prevail'
Havel left office in 2003, 10 years after Czechoslovakia broke up and just months before both nations joined the European Union. He was credited with laying the groundwork that brought his Czech Republic into the 27-nation bloc, and was president when it joined NATO in 1999.
Shy and bookish, with wispy mustache and unkempt hair, Havel came to symbolize the power of the people to peacefully overcome totalitarian rule.
"Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred," Havel famously said. It became his revolutionary motto which he said he always strove to live by.
Havel was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize, and collected dozens of other accolades worldwide for his efforts as a global ambassador of conscience, defended the downtrodden from Darfur to Myanmar.
Among his many honors were Sweden's prestigious Olof Palme Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian award, bestowed on him by President George W. Bush for being "one of liberty's great heroes."
An avowed peacenik whose heroes included rockers such as Frank Zappa, he never quite shed his flower-child past and often signed his name with a small heart as a flourish.
In an October 2008 interview with The Associated Press, Havel rebuked Russia for invading Georgia two months earlier, and warned EU leaders against appeasing Moscow.
"We should not turn a blind eye ... It's a big test for the West," he said.
Havel also said he saw the global economic crisis as a warning not to abandon basic human values in the scramble to prosper.
"It's a warning against the idea that we understand the world, that we know how everything works," he told the AP in his office in Prague. The cramped work space was packed with his books, plays and rock memorabilia.
Underground essays
Havel first made a name for himself after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion that crushed the Prague Spring reforms of Alexander Dubcek and other liberally minded communists in what was then Czechoslovakia.
Havel's plays were banned as hard-liners installed by Moscow snuffed out every whiff of rebellion. But he continued to write, producing a series of underground essays that stand with the work of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov as the most incisive and eloquent analyses of what communism did to society and the individual.
One of his best-known essays, "The Power and the Powerless" written in 1978, borrowed slyly from the immortal opening line of the mid-19th century Communist Manifesto, writing: "A specter is haunting eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called 'dissent.'"
In the essay, he dissected what he called the "dictatorship of ritual" — the ossified Soviet bloc system under Leonid Brezhnev — and imagined what happens when an ordinary greengrocer stops displaying communist slogans and begins "living in truth," rediscovering "his suppressed identity and dignity."
Havel knew that suppression firsthand.
Born Oct. 5, 1936, in Prague, the child of a wealthy family which lost extensive property to communist nationalization in 1948, Havel was denied a formal education, eventually earning a degree at night school and starting out in theater as a stagehand.
His political activism began in earnest in January 1977, when he co-authored the human rights manifesto Charter 77, and the cause drew widening attention in the West.
Havel was detained countless times and spent four years in communist jails. His letters from prison to his wife became one of his best-known works. "Letters to Olga" blended deep philosophy with a stream of stern advice to the spouse he saw as his mentor and best friend, and who tolerated his reputed philandering and other foibles.
The events of August 1988 — the 20th anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion — first suggested that Havel and his friends might one day replace the faceless apparatchiks who jailed them.
Thousands of mostly young people marched through central Prague, yelling Havel's name and that of the playwright's hero, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, the philosopher who was Czechoslovakia's first president after it was founded in 1918.
Havel's arrest in January 1989 at another street protest and his subsequent trial generated anger at home and abroad. Pressure for change was so strong that the communists released him again in May.
That fall, communism began to collapse across Eastern Europe, and in November the Berlin Wall fell. Eight days later, communist police brutally broke up a demonstration by thousands of Prague students. It was the signal that Havel and his country had awaited. Within 48 hours, a broad new opposition movement was founded, and a day later, hundreds of thousands of Czechs and Slovaks took to the streets.
In three heady weeks, communist rule was broken. Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones arrived just as the Soviet army was leaving. Posters in Prague proclaimed: "The tanks are rolling out — the Stones are rolling in."
On Dec. 29, 1989, Havel was elected Czechoslovakia's president by the country's still-communist parliament. Three days later, he told the nation in a televised New Year's address: "Out of gifted and sovereign people, the regime made us little screws in a monstrously big, rattling and stinking machine."
Although he continued to be regarded a moral voice as he decried the shortcomings of his society under democracy, he eventually bent to the dictates of convention and power. His watchwords — "what the heart thinks, the tongue speaks" — had to be modified for day-to-day politics.
And post-revolutionary life contained many challenges.
In July 1992, it became clear that the Czechoslovak federation was heading for a split. Considering it a personal failure, Havel resigned as president.
But he remained popular and was elected president of the new Czech Republic uncontested.
He was small, but his presence and wit could fill a room. Even late in life, he retained a certain impishness and boyish grin, shifting easily from philosophy to jokes or plain old Prague gossip.
In December 1996, just 11 months after his first wife, Olga Havlova, died of cancer, he lost a third of his right lung during surgery to remove a half-inch malignant tumor.
He gave up smoking and married Dagmar Veskrnova, a dashing actress almost 20 years his junior.
Holding a post of immense prestige but little power, Havel's image suffered in the latter years as his people discovered the difficulties of transforming their society in the post-communist era.
Vaclav Havel, right, jokes during a secret meeting at the Czech-Polish border with Zbigniew Janas of the Polish dissident union "Solidarity" on on June 26, 1989. Behind them, a sign reads: "Attention, do not cross the border". Who is the mysterious third hand?
His attempts to reconcile rival politicians were considered by many as unconstitutional intrusions, and his pleas for political leaders to build a "civic society" based on respect, tolerance and individual responsibility went largely unanswered.
Media criticism, once unthinkable, became unrelenting. Serious newspapers questioned his political visions; tabloids focused mainly on his private life and his flashy second wife.
Havel himself acknowledged that his handling of domestic issues never matched his flair for foreign affairs. But when the Czech Republic joined NATO in March 1999, and the European Union in May 2004, his dreams came true.
"I can't stop rejoicing that I live in this time and can participate in it," Havel exulted.
Early in 2008, Havel returned to his first love: the stage. He published a new play, "Leaving," about the struggles of a leader on his way out of office, and the work gained critical acclaim.
Theater, he told the AP, was once again his major interest.
"My return to the stage was not easy," he said. "It's not a common thing for someone to be involved in theater, become a president, and then go back
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Wendell
United States
Arlington
Virginia
All the little chicks with crimson lips, go...
Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know.
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We have lost a giant.
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Proudly annoying Capitalists since 1959
Cuba
Santa Clara
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned
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You beat me to the punch on the article.
It's too bad he didn't see "his revolution" in the finished game.
I'll light a candle when I play the game.
Cheers, Haring
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Art Damage
United States
Boston
Massachusetts
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As a counterpoint:
http://www.chomsky.info/letters/19900301.htm
http://www.speroforum.com/a/XYIZFBCMRD59/65644-RIP-Vaclav-Ha...
I find the lionization of Havel unfortunate, because, like all such lionizations, it masks important truths. Chomsky's comparison of Havel to a Vietnamese villager seems apt; Havel accomplished laudable things for his country fighting against its occupying superpower, but this fight seems to have blinded him the evils of that superpower's alternate.
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Ted Torgerson
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Art
I appreciate your perspective. People can read Havel's speech to Congress, which Chomsky calls an "embarrassingly silly and morally repugnant Sunday School sermon," at the following link.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/havel1.htm
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Art Damage
United States
Boston
Massachusetts
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1989Game wrote: Art I appreciate your perspective. People can read Havel's speech to Congress, which Chomsky calls an "embarrassingly silly and morally repugnant Sunday School sermon," at the following link. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/havel1.htm
Ted:
The letter references assumes the reader (it is directed at someone specific) is familiar with the background of the speech. For those interested, that background covered in some detail in the book 'Deferring Democracy'. What Chomsky finds morally repugnant is the effort that is put forth in framing the entire production as if it were happening in a fairy tale, Good vs Evil, White Hats vs Black Hats, etc etc. It's a problem that America (and the USSR, certainly) has had in the past, certainly in regards to the Cold War period, and a problem that certainly persists to this day.
It's fairly easy to selectively quote Chomsky and vaguely imply he's up to no good. Have you any response to the second link? Havel declaring he would never sell arms to oppressive regimes, then turning around and arming fascists in Thailand and the Phillipines? Allowing Pinochet to arms shop in Czechoslavakia? His demands to suspend parliament? His violations of his own Human Rights charter? His auctioning of everything of public worth to (mostly international) investors, and his bizarre restitution campaign? Michael Parenti devotes an entire chapter to this stuff in 'Blackshirts and Reds', and it's pretty damning stuff, even if you pass such things as the fairly violent union-busting, the 'Christian Nation' schtick, and lack of one single moment where he 'stood for freedom' against U.S. interests.
I'm not trying to demonize Havel - that would be as misguided as lionizing him. But it's important to consider all of the data, even if it interferes with what we'd like to believe.
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Ted Torgerson
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Quote: The letter references assumes the reader (it is directed at someone specific) is familiar with the background of the speech. For those interested, that background covered in some detail in the book 'Deferring Democracy'. What Chomsky finds morally repugnant is the effort that is put forth in framing the entire production as if it were happening in a fairy tale, Good vs Evil, White Hats vs Black Hats, etc etc. It's a problem that America (and the USSR, certainly) has had in the past, certainly in regards to the Cold War period, and a problem that certainly persists to this day.
It's fairly easy to selectively quote Chomsky and vaguely imply he's up to no good.
I didn't mean to imply Chomsky was up to no good or to selectively quote him. On the contrary I wanted to put Chomsky's comments into proper context. Chomsky's letter is critical of Havel's address to a joint session of Congress (the same speech when the photo at the top of the thread was taken) so I wanted people to understand the context of Chomsky's comments. I've read the speech, and though I don't completely understand what Havel means when he argues "Consciousness precedes Being", I don't find it morally repugnant at all. I agree there are shameful episodes in American history that Havel does not bring up, but that doesn't make what he said morally repugnant.
Quote: Have you any response to the second link?
The radical free market reforms were driven by Vaclav Klaus, not Havel, though Havel did not obstruct the process. At the time it was believed that the speed of transition was crucial to minimizing dislocation. I agree with the author that the lustration laws in Czechoslovakia were too severe.
Quote: I'm not trying to demonize Havel - that would be as misguided as lionizing him. But it's important to consider all of the data, even if it interferes with what we'd like to believe.
Absolutely.
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Jim F
United Kingdom
Birmingham
West Midlands
HRC - His Royal Cheekiness, Rajah Babu
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Personally I admire him for his courage and humanity. I'd admire Chomsky more if he was making his comments from within a repressive regime which routinely imprisons dissidents and subjects them to round the clock surveillance.
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Art Damage
United States
Boston
Massachusetts
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1989Game wrote: I agree there are shameful episodes in American history that Havel does not bring up, but that doesn't make what he said morally repugnant.
Thanks for the further response, Ted. To be clear, it isn't history that Chomsky objects to; the U.S. was doing some pretty awful things in the 1980s, too, supporting fascist governments in Guatemala and Salvador, funding the Contras, destabilizing Nicaragua, interfering in Cambodia Angola and the Philippines, etc etc. And, of course, some of the victims of the U.S. 'history' were still dealing with the aftermath in 1989 without assistance or acknowledgement. Some still are.
In other words, Chomsky wasn't objecting to Havel not speechifying against the Triangle Trade, but rather pointing out that Havel's commitment to 'freedom' was myopic, as the U.S.'s always is (see Vietnam, Latin America, and very recently the Middle East).
"It was believed at the time" seems a weak response to the excesses outlined - such a phrase can be applied indiscriminately to the horrors of history (and today!) and obscures the fact that some people very much didn't believe that - but I'm glad we agree that mistakes were made.
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I have studied political science and history and have experiences from the first hand as I was born in 1981 in Czechoslovakia (yes, I was too young, but my parents were not
 ), so I think I could bring my point of view to this debate:
Politics is a dirty business. Who wants in, must get dirty. You cannot be an idealist who believes that he can retain 100% of his ideals. You have to make compromises.
And when you approach such a difficult topic as the Cold War is, you have to look at it from a distance so you can see the whole picture.
No one here believes (I hope), that Cold War was a "White vs. Black" fight. It was more like "Lightgrey vs. Darkgrey" 
We cannot close eyes on rightwing coups supported by CIA against socialist governments in Latin America. Also founding of NATO declaring protection of democracy, when founding members were Spain under Franco and Portugal under Salazar. But this was the Cold War. If USA would back up, USSR could exploit it. And as I said, politics is a dirty business. We could discuss for hours about Domino effect, political struggle, areas of influence etc. but beside the two superpowers (USA vs. USSR) there were also many small countries under the influence and controll of superpowers. And that was especially in the "Darkgrey" Eastern block. Soviet satelites were in more difficult situation than allied countries in the Western block. USSR "ruled" with much stronger hand above Central and Eastern Europe countries.
So when it comes to Democracy vs. Socialism (or Stalinism if you wish) part of struggle, I go 100% for the Democratic side. Without any questions. And this is where Western block morally wins. Many of you here didn't have to live in an authoritarian regime (and neither Noam Chomsky). You could say what you wanted, travel where you wanted, believe in what you wanted. I for example was baptised in secret, because my father was an army officer. My uncle got kicked out of work because his sister emigrated to Switzerland. And this was only a minor persecution compared to labour in uranium mines. (And I am not talking about the economy, when we had bananas or oranges only for Christmas and sometimes people had to stay queues for a toilet paper.) The fall of the communist regime was a good thing and nobody will convince me otherwise. That is why I will respect all people who fought against the former regime and helped to bring freedom to my country. And Václav Havel was one of them.
Of course if it comes to politics, even the Year 1989 wasn't 100% "white", there are many rumours around it, how this massive movement in Central and Eastern Europe wasn't as spontaneous as it seems. That it was started by foreign intelligence services (as it was in Arab Spring last year). There are rumours that in Czechoslovakia was the revolution rather calm and without heavy casualities (Velvet revolution) because the old regime representants secretly agreed with the leaders of Civic forum to pass the governance in exchange for not being punished, etc. There are also rumours that Havel personally gave order to close weapon industry in Slovakia (one of the most important economic sector of Slovakia). Also the following 90-ies, dividing of Czechoslovakia, rise of criminality and wild privatization were rather dark years and after 20 years it is still not perfect and I don't know if in next 20 years we will reach the level of Western Europe, but I am still glad for the Year 1989.
It is easy for people like Noam Chomsky to criticize political decizions especially when they didn't have to live here. But lecture Havel for propagation of anticomunism? What does he expect? That he wil praise the regime that put him in prison for his beliefs? Criticize Havel for restitutions? Maybe an anarchist Chomsky doesn't care about private ownership, but I would like to have back what someone took away from my family. Chomsky sounds like the old saying: If one wants to beat a dog, one finds a stick.
What I wanted to say with this rather incosistent post is, that I certainly agree that we should not single-sidedly praise someone, because it can lead only to a personality cults and we know what such an extremes could do, but people like Noam Chomsky are on the other side of this extremes and we have to approach them with an equivalent caution.
PS: Please exuse my poor english. It was very hard for me to write about such a serious theme in foreing language.
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Art Damage
United States
Boston
Massachusetts
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MG:
Thanks for your response. I'm quite certain you express yourself better in my native tongue than I do in yours.
I do think you have Chomsky a bit wrong here. He was very anti-Stalinist during the Cold War, going so far as to travel to countries with active revolutions and warn them against romanticizing the Soviet Union. The enemy of your enemy is quite often not your friend.
No one - certainly not Chomsky - regrets that democracy came to eastern Europe. But while you have reasonable (at least!) reasons to harbor a grudge against Stalinism, there are places in the world that have equal reason to feel the exact same way against the U.S. Even so, it would be wrong for them to paint Stalinism as a liberating force interested in world peace and freedom, just as it is wrong to paint the U.S. in such a light. After all, the U.S. 'won' the Cold War long ago, but its support of fascists against the people of their own countries continues to this very day.
And, like Ted, I think you brush off Havel's actions a bit too easily. Everyone is for stolen property being returned, but Havel's actions in essentially reestablishing noble lands last seen when the Hapsburgs were in power was reactionary and, quite frankly, a bit insane. And the laundry-list continues from there.
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Ken Crangle
United States
Albany
Oregon
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stosedem wrote:
PS: Please exuse my poor english. It was very hard for me to write about such a serious theme in foreing language.
Thank you for this post. It is beautifully written and beautifully expressed. I've always approached Chomsky with caution anyway because in fact, he does have his own cult following.
I can't even generate a cult following among my own three daughters.
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Art Damage
United States
Boston
Massachusetts
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Crangle wrote: I've always approached Chomsky with caution anyway because in fact, he does have his own cult following.
Did you have anything to contribute to the conversation apart from the passive-aggressive ad hominem? Chomsky, for his part, made specific points and backed them up with facts. If that's a cult, count me in. It seems better than your alternative.
I appreciate MG's contribution, but let's be honest - it contains little of substance. "Politics is grey and someone who didn't live in that specific place and time cannot critique Havel's actions." seem to be his two points. To which I respond:
1. Duh. This is the very reason we should not lionize Havel, and...
2. Bullshit.
The second 'point' denies us the ability to object to any of the horrors of history or the injustices of today. Havel played an important part in the struggle against Stalinism, and there is no doubt he accomplished laudable things. But it is important - nay, vital - that we leave ourselves intellectual room to consider the fact that he was a flawed human being who made some egregious decisions after Stalinism had been defeated (in this he could perhaps be compared to Churchill, whose post-WW2 legacy and quick dismissal from politics is often forgotten outside of Britain). History is rife with 'conquering heroes' (of every stripe) riding their cheering, grateful public to further excesses.
The lionization of Havel serves to occlude a great many important historical truths, not the least of which is the US's record of human rights abuses during the Cold War and after.
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I didn't say you couldn't criticize Havel. I criticized him as well. Only what I wanted to say is that some points of Chomsky's criticism are just wrong and unrealistic.
But this happens often when idealist stumble upon reality.
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Posted Sun Dec 18, 2011 11:41 pm
