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The Dissident as President
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17862 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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3 / 1990 |
2,173 Words |
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Interview With Václav Havel
This exclusive World & I interview with Václav Havel,
president of Czechoslovakia, was conducted by Arnoöt Lustig, a
Czech novelist who teaches literature and film at American
University. |
On December 12, 1989, on a sunny afternoon in mild winter, a speaker for Civic Forum, a coalition of political groups that came together to support the Czech student demonstrations for freedom that began November 17, addressed a hundred thousand people in Wenceslas Square. Announcing the Civic Forum candidate for president, he said, "Our candidate is a man who is, was, and will be clean." The people shouted, "Havel!" The spokesman went on, "Our candidate is one who overcame fear." The crowd shouted, "Havel!" The speaker declared, "He is a free man, an able man, who was not broken by jails or persecution. A man who never lied." The people thundered, "Havel!”
Only a few months earlier, in May 1989, Václav Havel had been released from prison, where he was serving a term for dissident activities. He was set free only because he was so seriously ill with pneumonia that the government feared he would become a martyr in the cause of Czech freedom. Czechoslovakians were unaware of Havel's dissident activities beyond a vague knowledge of the Charter 77 proclamations of civil and human rights. Charter 77, the work of Havel and a small group of his dissident friends, was very actively opposed by the government, which had mounted such a large campaign denouncing it that it had become famous. Havel's political thought, penned after publication of his writing was prohibited, was deeply understood only by those intellectuals, artists, and students who had been lucky enough to read him in underground editions. Productions of his plays had been prohibited since 1969, and so they, too, were familiar only to older theatergoers or to readers who encountered them in smuggled editions.
In December, however, Havel was able to address millions of
... (1992 of 12232 Characters)
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