Dear Mr. Speaker,
Dear Mr. President,
Dear senators and members of the House,
Ladies and gentlemen:
My advisors have advised me, on this important occasion,
to speak in Czech. I don't know why. Perhaps they wanted you to
enjoy the sound of my mother tongue.
The last time they arrested me, on October 27 of last
year, I didn't know whether it was for two days or two years.
Exactly one month later, when rock musician Michael Kocab told
me that I would probably be proposed as a presidential candidate,
I thought it was one of his usual jokes.
On the 10th of December 1989, when my actor friend Ji_i
Bartoska, in the name of the Civic Forum, nominated me as a candidate
for the office of the president of the republic, I thought it
was out of the question that the Parliament we had inherited from
the previous regime would elect me.
Twelve days later, when I was unanimously elected president
of my country, I had no idea that in two months I would be speaking
in front of this famous and powerful assembly, and that I would
be heard by millions of people who have never heard of me and
that hundreds of politicians and political scientists would study
every word I say.
When they arrested me on October 27, I was living in a
country ruled by the most conservative Communist government in
Europe, and our society slumbered beneath the pall of a totalitarian
system. Today, less than four months later, I am speaking to you
as the representative of a country which has complete freedom
of speech, which is preparing for free elections, and which seeks
to establish a prosperous market economy and its own foreign policy.
It is all very extraordinary indeed.
But I have not come here to speak about myself or my feelings,
or merely to talk about my own country. I have used this small
example of something I know well to illustrate something general
and important.
We are living in extraordinary times. The human face of
the world is changing so rapidly that none of the familiar political
speedometers are adequate.
We playwrights, who have to cram a whole human life or
an entire historical era into a twohour play, can scarcely understand
this rapidity ourselves. And if it gives us trouble, think of
the trouble it must give to political scientists, who spend their
whole lives studying the realm of the probable and have even less
experience with the realm of the improbable than playwrights.
Let me try to explain why I think the velocity of the
changes in my country, in Central and Eastern Europe, and of course
in the Soviet Union itself, has made such a significant impression
on the world today, and why it concerns the fate of us all, including
Americans. I would like to look at this, first from the political
point of view and then from a point of view we might call philosophical.
Twice in this century, the world has been threatened by
a catastrophe. Twice this catastrophe was born in Europe, and
twice Americans, along with others, were called upon to save Europe,
the whole world and yourselves. The first rescue provided significant
help to Czechs and Slovaks.
Thanks to the great support of your President Wilson,
our first President, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, was able to found
a modern independent state. He founded it, as you know, on the
same principles on which the United States of America had been
founded, as Masaryk's manuscripts held by the Library of Congress
testify.
At the same time, the United States made enormous strides.
It became the most powerful nation on earth, and it understood
the responsibility that flowed from this. Proof of this are the
hundreds of thousands of your young citizens who gave their lives
for the liberation of Europe, and the graves of American airmen
and soldiers on Czechoslovak soil.
But something else was happening as well: The Soviet Union
appeared, grew, and transformed the enormous sacrifices of its
people suffering under totalitarian rule into a strength that,
after World War II, made it the second most powerful nation in
the world. It was a country that rightly gave people nightmares,
because no one knew what would happen and when to worsen the mood
of its rulers, and what country it would decide to conquer and
drag into its sphere of influence, as it is called in political
language.
All of this taught us to see the world in bipolar terms,
as two enormous forces, one a defender of freedom, the other a
source of nightmares. Europe became the point of friction between
these two powers, and thus it turned into a single enormous arsenal
divided into two parts. In this process, one half of the arsenal
became part of that nightmarish power, while the other the free
part bordering on the ocean and having no wish to be driven into
it, was compelled, together with you, to build a complicated security
system, to which we probably owe the fact that we still exist.
So you may have contributed to the salvation of us Europeans,
of the world and thus of yourselves for a third time: You have
helped us to survive until today without a hot war this time,
merely a cold one.
And now the totalitarian system in the Soviet Union and
in most of its satellites is breaking down, and our nations are
looking for a way to democracy and independence. The first act
in this remarkable drama began when Mr. Gorbachev and those around
him, faced with the sad reality in their country, initiated the
policy of "perestroika." Apparently they too had no
idea what they were setting in motion or how rapidly events would
unfold. We knew a great deal about the enormous number of growing
problems that slumbered beneath the honeyed, unchanging mask of
socialism. But I don't think any of us knew how little it would
take for these problems to manifest themselves in all their enormity,
and for the longings of these nations to emerge in all their strength.
The mask fell away so rapidly that, in the flood of work, we have
had literally no time even to be astonished.
What does all this mean for the world in the long run?
Obviously a number of things. This is, I am firmly convinced,
a historically irreversible process, and as a result Europe will
begin again to seek its own identity without being compelled to
be a divided armory any longer. Perhaps this will create the hope
that sooner or later your young men will no longer have to stand
on guard for freedom in Europe or come to our rescue, because
Europe will at last be able to stand guard over itself.
But that is still not the most important thing. The main
thing is, it seems to me, that these revolutionary changes will
enable us to escape from the rather antiquated straitjacket of
this bipolar view of the world, and to enter at last into an era
of multipolarity. That is, into an era in which all of us, large
and small, former slaves and former masters, will be able to create
what your great President Lincoln called "the family of man".
Can you imagine what a relief this would be to that part of the
world which for some reason is called the Third World, even though
it is the largest?
I don't think it's appropriate simply to generalize, so
let me be specific:
1) As you certainly know, most of the big wars and other
European conflagrations over the centuries have traditionally
begun and ended on the territory of modern Czechoslovakia, or
else they were somehow related to that area. Let the Second World
War stand as the most recent example. This is understandable.
Whether we like it or not, we are located in the very heart of
Europe, and thanks to this, we have no view of the sea, and no
real navy. I mention this because political stability in our country
has traditionally been important for the whole of Europe. This
is still true today. Our government of national understanding,
our present Federal Assembly, the other bodies of the state, and
I myself, will personally guarantee this stability until we hold
free elections, planned for June.
We understand the terribly complex reasons, domestic political
reasons above all, why the Soviet Union cannot withdraw its troops
from our territory as quickly as they arrived in 1968. We understand
that the arsenals built there over the past twenty years cannot
be dismantled and removed overnight. Nevertheless, in our bilateral
negotiations with the Soviet Union, we would like to have as many
Soviet units as possible moved out of our country before the elections,
in the interests of political stability. The more successful our
negotiations, the more those who are elected will be able to guarantee
political stability in our country even after the elections.
2) I often hear the question: How can the United States
of America help us today? My reply is as paradoxical as the whole
of my life has been: You can help us most of all if you help the
Soviet Union on its irreversible, but immensely complicated, road
to democracy. It is far more complicated than the road open to
its former European satellites. You yourselves probably know best
how to support, as rapidly as possible, the nonviolent evolution
of this enormous, multinational body politic toward democracy
and autonomy for all of its peoples. Therefore, it is not fitting
for me to offer you any advice. I can only say that the sooner,
the more quickly, and the more peacefully the Soviet Union begins
to move along the road toward genuine political pluralism, respect
for the rights of nations to their own integrity and to a working
that is a market economy, the better it will be, not just for
Czechs and Slovaks, but for the whole world. And the sooner you
yourselves will be able to reduce the burden of the military budget
born by the American people. To put it metaphorically, the millions
you give to the East today soon will return to you in the form
of billions in savings.
3) It is not true that the Czech writer Vaclav Havel wishes
to dissolve the Warsaw Pact tomorrow and then NATO the day after
that, as some eager journalists have written. Vaclav Havel merely
thinks what he has already said here, that American soldiers shouldn't
have to be separated from their mothers for another hundred years
just because Europe is incapable of being a guarantor of world
peace, which it ought to be, to make at least some amends for
having given the world two world wars.
Sooner or later Europe must recover and come into its
own, and decide for itself how many of those soldiers it needs,
so that its own security, and all the wider implications of security,
may radiate peace into the whole world. Vaclav Havel cannot make
decisions about things it is not proper for him to decide. He
is merely putting in a good word for genuine peace, and for achieving
it quickly.
4) Czechoslovakia thinks that the planned summit of countries
participating in the Helsinki process should take place soon,
and that in addition to what it wants to accomplish, it should
aim to hold the socalled Helsinki II conference earlier than 1992,
as originally planned. Above all, we feel it could be something
far more significant than has so far seemed possible. We think
that Helsinki II should become something equivalent to a European
peace conference, which has not yet been held; one that would
finally put a formal end to the Second World War and all its unhappy
consequences. Such a conference would officially bring a future
democratic Germany, in the process of unifying itself, into a
new panEuropean structure which could decide about its own security
system. This would naturally require some connection with that
part of the globe we might label the "Helsinki" part,
stretching westward from Vladivostok and all the way to Alaska.
The borders of the European states, which by the way should become
gradually less important, should finally be legally guaranteed
by a common, regular treaty. It should be more than obvious that
the basis for such a treaty would have to be general respect for
human rights, genuine political pluralism and genuinely free elections.
5) Naturally, we welcome the initiative of President Bush,
which was essentially accepted by Mr. Gorbachev as well, according
to which the number of American and Soviet troops in Europe should
be radically reduced. It is a magnificent shot in the arm for
the Vienna disarmament talks and creates favorable conditions
not only for our own efforts to achieve the quickest possible
departure of Soviet troops from Czechoslovakia, but, indirectly
as well, for our own intention to make considerable cuts in the
Czechoslovak army, which is disproportionately large in relation
to our population. If Czechoslovakia were forced to defend itself
against anyone, which we hope will not happen, then it would be
capable of doing so with a considerably smaller army, because
this time its defense would be not only after decades but even
centuries supported by the common and indivisible will of both
of its nations and its leadership. Our freedom, independence and
our newborn democracy have been purchased at great cost, and we
will not surrender them. For the sake of order, I should add that
whatever steps we take are not intended to complicate the Vienna
disarmament talks, but on the contrary, to facilitate them.
6) Czechoslovakia is returning to Europe. In the general
interest and its own interest as well, it wants to coordinate
this return both political and economic with the other returnees,
which means, above all, with its neighbors the Poles and the Hungarians.
We are doing what we can to coordinate these returns. And at the
same time, we are doing what we can so that Europe will be capable
of really accepting us, its wayward children, which means that
it may open itself to us and may begin to transform its structures
which are formally European but de facto Western European in
that direction, but in such a way that it will not be to its detriment
but rather to its advantage.
7) I have already said this in our Parliament, and I would
like to repeat it here, in this Congress, which is architecturally
far more attractive: For many years, Czechoslovakia as someone's
meaningless satellite has refused to face up honestly to its
co-responsibility for the world. It has a lot to make up for.
If I dwell on this and so many important things here, it is only
because I feel along with my fellow citizens a sense of culpability
for our former reprehensible passivity and a rather ordinary sense
of indebtedness.
8) Last but not least, we are of course delighted that
your country is so readily lending its support to our fresh efforts
to renew democracy. Both our peoples were deeply moved by the
generous offers made a few days ago in Prague at the Charles University,
one of the oldest in Europe, by your secretary of state, Mr. James
Baker. We are ready to sit down and talk about them.
Ladies and gentlemen, I've only been president for two
months, and I haven't attended any schools for presidents. My
only school was life itself. Therefore, I don't want to burden
you any longer with my political thoughts, but instead I will
move on to an area that is more familiar to me, to what I would
call the philosophical aspect of those changes that still concern
everyone, although they are taking place in our corner of the
world.
As long as people are people, democracy in the full sense
of the word will always be no more than an ideal; one may approach
it as one would a horizon, in ways that may be better or worse,
but it can never be fully attained. In this sense you are also
merely approaching democracy. You have thousands of problems of
all kinds, as other countries do. But you have one great advantage:
You have been approaching democracy uninterruptedly for more than
200 years, and your journey toward that horizon has never been
disrupted by a totalitarian system. Czechs and Slovaks, despite
their humanistic traditions that go back to the first millennium,
have approached democracy for a mere twenty years, between the
two world wars, and now for three and a half months since the
17th of November of last year.
The advantage that you have over us is obvious at once.
The Communist type of totalitarian system has left both
our nations, Czech and Slovaks as it has all the nations of the
Soviet Union, and the other countries the Soviet Union subjugated
in its time a legacy of countless dead, an infinite spectrum
of human suffering, profound economic decline, and above all enormous
human humiliation. It has brought us horrors that fortunately
you have not known.
At the same time, however unintentionally, of course
it has given us something positive: a special capacity to look,
from time to time, somewhat further than someone who has not undergone
this bitter experience. A person who cannot move and live a normal
life because he is pinned under a boulder has more time to think
about his hopes than someone who is not trapped in this way.
What I am trying to say is this: We must all learn many
things from you, from how to educate our offspring, how to elect
our representatives, all the way to how to organize our economic
life so that it will lead to prosperity and not poverty. But it
doesn't have to be merely assistance from the welleducated, the
powerful and the wealthy to someone who has nothing to offer in
return.
We too can offer something to you: our experience and
the knowledge that has come from it.
This is a subject for books, many of which have already
been written and many of which have yet to be written. I shall
therefore limit myself to a single idea.
The specific experience I'm talking about has given me
one great certainty: Consciousness precedes Being, and not the
other way around, as Marxists claim.
For this reason, the salvation of this human world lies
nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect,
in human humbleness and in human responsibility.
Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness,
nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our Being
as humans, and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed,
whether it be ecological, social, demographic or a general breakdown
of civilization, will be unavoidable. If we are no longer threatened
by world war or by the danger that the absurd mountains of accumulated
nuclear weapons might blow up the world, this does not mean that
we have definitively won. We are in fact far from definite victory.
We are still a long way from that "family of man;"
in fact, we seem to be receding from the ideal rather than drawing
closer to it. Interests of all kinds: personal, selfish, state,
national, group and, if you like, company interests still considerably
outweigh genuinely common and global interests. We are still under
the sway of the destructive and thoroughly vain belief that man
is the pinnacle of creation, and not just a part of it, and that
therefore everything is permitted. There are still many who say
they are concerned not for themselves but for the cause, while
they are demonstrably out for themselves and not for the cause
at all. We are still destroying the planet that was entrusted
to us, and its environment. We still close our eyes to the growing
social, ethnic and cultural conflicts in the world. From time
to time we say that the anonymous megamachinery we have created
for ourselves no longer serves us but rather has enslaved us,
yet we still fail to do anything about it.
In other words, we still don't know how to put morality
ahead of politics, science and economics. We are still incapable
of understanding that the only genuine backbone of all our actions
if they are to be moral is responsibility. Responsibility to
something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success.
Responsibility to the order of Being, where all our actions are
indelibly recorded and where, and only where, they will be properly
judged.
The interpreter or mediator between us and this higher
authority is what is traditionally referred to as human conscience.
If I subordinate my political behavior to this imperative,
I can't go far wrong. If on the contrary I were not guided by
this voice, not even ten presidential schools with 2,000 of the
best political scientists in the world could help me.
This is why I ultimately decided after resisting for
a long time to accept the burden of political responsibility.
I'm not the first nor will I be the last intellectual
to do this. On the contrary, my feeling is that there will be
more and more of them all the time. If the hope of the world lies
in human consciousness, then it is obvious that intellectuals
cannot go on forever avoiding their share of responsibility for
the world and hiding their distastes for politics under an alleged
need to be independent.
It is easy to have independence in your program and then
leave others to carry out that program. If everyone thought that
way, soon no one would be independent.
I think that Americans should understand this way of thinking.
Wasn't it the best minds of your country, people you could call
intellectuals, who wrote your famous Declaration of Independence,
your Bill of Rights and your Constitution and who above all
took upon themselves the practical responsibility for putting
them into practice? The worker from Branik in Prague, whom your
president referred to in his State of the Union message this year,
is far from being the only person in Czechoslovakia, let alone
in the world, to be inspired by those great documents. They inspire
us all. They inspire us despite the fact that they are over 200
years old. They inspire us to be citizens.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote that "Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the Consent
of the Governed," it was a simple and important act of the
human spirit.
What gave meaning to that act, however, was the fact that
the author backed it up with his life. It was not just his words,
it was his deeds as well.
I will end where I began. History has accelerated. I believe
that once again, it will be the human spirit that will notice
this acceleration, give it a name, and transform those words into
deeds.
* Edited by Paul Wilson