Vaclav HAVELPresident of the Czech Republic |
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Vaclav Havel was born in Prague on October 5, 1936. In 1951 he completed his
compulsory schooling. Being the offspring of a prominent Prague businessmen's family,
he was barred from pursuing regular studies afterwards. For four years, while taking an
apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory technician, he was attending evening classes at
a grammar school. It was at the age of nineteen that he started publishing studies and
articles in literary and theater magazines. Family tradition has led him toward embracing
the humanist values of Czech culture that were suppressed or destroyed in the 1950s. As
he was not allowed, due to his family background, to study humanities, he went on to a
Technical University where he spent two years.
After completing his military service, he worked as a stagehand at the ABC Theater and
later, from 1960, in the Theater on the Balustrade. The latter theater produced his first
plays, most importantly The Garden Party (1963), a piece representing in an outstanding
manner the strong regeneration tendencies prevailing in Czech culture and Czech society
in the 1960s which culminated in the so-called Prague Spring of 1968. At that time
Vaclav Havel was taking part in public and cultural life as one of the standard-bearers of the democratic concepts of Czech culture and society. In the second half of the 1960s
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(1968), were performed. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops, which put
an end to the Prague Spring regeneration process, Vaclav Havel did not abandon his
convictions. Consequently, a lasting ban was imposed on publication of his plays in
Czechoslovakia. (In 1974 he even worked as a laborer in a brewery.)
It was then that Vaclav Havel began to be known by the international public as a
representative of the Czechoslovak intellectual opposition. As a citizen he protested
against the extensive oppression marking the years of the so-called normalization. His
open letter to Dr. Gustav Husak (the then President of Czechoslovakia) of 1975 in which
he pointed out the critical condition of the society and the responsibility of the then
ruling regime for that condition became widely known. In 1977 he became one of the co-
founders of, and one of the first three spokesmen for, the Charter 77 initiative. He was
also a member of the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted which was
founded by a group of Charter 77 signatories. His activity brought him to prison three
times; altogether he spent in prison nearly five years. Of extraordinary importance at that
time was his essay The Power of the Powerless (1978) in which he analyzed the essence
of Communist totalitarian oppression and described the means and mechanisms used by
the Communist regime in its effort to create a powerless, resigned society consisting of
timid and morally corrupt individuals. Against the background of that analysis, he
demonstrated the strength of moral resistance - of life in truth. The impact of the essay
reached beyond the scope of the Czechoslovak dissent, influencing also the opposition
movements in other then "socialist" countries.
In November 1989 Vaclav Havel was one of the leading initiators of the founding of the
Civic Forum, an association uniting opposition civic movements and democratic
initiatives. Since the very first days of its existence he was the head of the Civic Forum,
becoming a key figure of the "Velvet Revolution". In December 1989 he was elected
President of Czechoslovakia for a term ending after parliamentary elections were held
in the country. The freely elected Parliament re-elected him to the presidency in July
1990 for a term of two years.
As President of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, he met nearly all European
Heads of State, as well as the Presidentsof the United States, the Soviet Union and a
number of other countries. His activity in the area of foreign policy has laid the
foundations of Czechoslovakia's new external relations. In domestic policy Vaclav Havel
July 20, at 6 pm. On July 17 he accounted for the abdication by explaining that he could
no longer fulfill commitments necessitated by the oath of allegiance to the Czech and
Slovac Republic in a way that would harmonize with his convictions, dispositions
and consciousness.
After his resignation he left public life for 2 months. In September 1992 he agreed with
goverment's suggestion that first, President is to be elected by both chambers of
Parliament, second, President cannot be recalled by Parliament and third, the President
has right to dissolve Parliament. Moreover, he agreed with so-called right of suspensive
veto (it is the right of President to return laws to Parliament).
On January 1993 Vaclav Havel was elected the first President of the Czech Republic.
During Vaclav Havel's presidency two more books have come into being - Projevy (only
in Czech, 1990) and Letni premitani (1991).
For his literary work and civic activities, especially as a human rights champion, Vaclav
Havel was awarded numerous prestigious international prizes. They include The Erasmus
Prize (1986), The Olof Palme Prize (1989), The Simon Bolivar Prize, UNESCO (1990), The UNESCO Prize for the Teaching of Human Rights (1990), The Chalemagne Prize (1991), The Sonning Prize |
Order of the Legion of Honor (1990).
Vaclav Havel is also a holder of honorary doctorates of York University, Toronto,
Canada, Le Mirail University, Toulouse, France (both 1982), Columbia University, New
York, USA, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, Frantisek Palacky University,
Olomouc, Czechoslovakia, Charles University, Prague, Czechoslovakia, Comenius
University, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (all 1990), The Free University of Brussels,
Belgium, and St. Gallen University (both 1991).