By Carl Ginther, Prague
More than ever, his legacy tells us what is missing in politics today
Yesterday I arrived in the Czech Republic to spend Christmas with my family, only to be met by shock and sadness that a great individual, let alone a political force, was lost to this world. He was humorous, witty, a brilliant playwright; like me, he loved Czech beer, he smoked – a lot; a thinker, a philosopher, a visionary. A rocker; Mick Jagger and Lou Reed were buds. When asked if he would play in the White House while he was there, Reed said, “heck ya, I’d fly to the moon”. He put hearts on everything.
Paradoxically, he was tough and quixotic. He was a secret pen-pal, writing matchbox sized letters to dissidents in jail. He was a humbled, soft-spoken man, but kept a quick pace with his messages of freedom, truth, and love; when necessary the caustic tongue unleashed, whether lambasting communist chameleons for becoming the post-1989 landlords (a “new shackle”) due to their insider information on property and business restitution, or today’s Czech politicians putting millions of Koruna in their pockets to fulfill their villa construction plans. Since the Velvet Revolution, he was always there, for Czechs and non-Czechs alike. When he spoke to U.S. Congress, his speech was interrupted 23 times by applause. In feeble condition last week, he met the Dalai Lama who asked him to live ten more years. He had less than ten days. This great individual was and is Mr. Václav Havel.
What made this man so? I can only guess… he endured what the lives of ten men should not: an enemy of a corrupt and paranoia-inducing government, years of prison labor and dances with death as a political dissident, the intricacies of leading Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic not with an iron fist but with a “velvet hammer”, and leadership of a country through turbulence and across ideological and political chasms to become a member of NATO and eventually the European Union. Mr. Václav Havel brought his nation security so that twenty years of democracy would catalyze subsequent twenty-year periods of democracy, unlike the First Republic of Czechoslovakia and its demise following World War II and the Warsaw Pact.
How did he do it? Mr. Havel inexorably preached that love and truth would defeat the forces of hate and lies in our world. I have three short stories to explain Havel’s love. How about presenting Mr. Liu Xiaobo (pre-Nobel and media buzz, in abscentia, jailed) a human rights award at a famous documentary film festival held annually here in Prague, during the EU-China Summit and EU presidency, simultaneously taking place in 2009. As Chinese and European ministers negotiated deals on the other side of the Vltava river, I was listening to Mr. Havel, translation bud in my ear, at St. Anna’s Church near Wenceslas Square where the Velvet Revolution began (and where Mr. Havel lays today). I discovered that Mr. Liu’s Charter 08 and Mr. Havel’s Charter 77 asked for the same rights; history was repeating, in a 21st century context. Mr. Liu, whose arrest occurred without legal proceeding, just two days prior to the 60th anniversary of the UN’s adoption of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, needed support versus the powers that be, and Havel was there.
Or, how about when Mr. Havel wrote President Obama during the “Russian reset”: “Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, we see central and eastern European countries are no longer at the heart of American foreign policy… (But) all is not well either in our region or in the transatlantic relationship…Russia is back as a revisionist power pursuing a 19th century agenda with 21st century tactics and methods…overt and covert means of economic warfare, ranging from economic blockades…to bribery and media manipulation.” Oh, how the eloquence of Havel’s tongue, or pen, was needed. These words are as relevant yesterday as they are today as we watch Putin’s power grip slipping. Mr. Havel stood up for millions to denounce apocryphal paradigms and paragons, even blind spots of those with power but without first-hand experience with Russian leaders. He did so neither from conservative nor liberal angles, but from what was right, humane, and philosophically correct in his mind and being. The Czech nation, even Eastern Europe, needed support versus the powers that be, so Havel was there.
And, how about Havel’s perpetual optimism, grounded in realism. Now, when is the last time a world leader successfully pulled off this paradox? Ask yourself. “I don’t have the magic wand, that’s completely exogenous to what I do,” stated Václav Havel in the autobiographical film Obcan Havel (Citizen Havel), to the managers of an Ostrava factory, which was losing contracts and workers following the turmoil of the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Havel famously told his citizens, again and again, that he was not elected to lie to them. Imagine that! Following the end of communism, many Czech people expected some sort of magician problem solver for President, and they were not interested in deferring gratification because it had been deferred for long enough! Despite angry citizens and Machiavellian detractors, Havel remained, in a unique fashion, hopeful, humanitarian and simultaneously realistic, self-aware, and discerning of his and his country’s strengths and weaknesses. Truth and love. In his 2003 presidential farewell address, the sometimes diffident Havel admitted as such the difficulties of his leadership: “I frequently even took what was clearly a minority position and so reaped more opposition than recognition. Sometimes I may have been mistaken in this but I would like to assure you of one thing: I have always tried to abide by the dictates of the authority under which I took my oath of office — the dictates of the best of my awareness and conscience.” From an American perspective, I respect the leader who calls a spade a spade, who doesn’t over promise and under deliver; and who’s indisputable voice comes from within. Havel in fact said, if he has one regret, it is that he listened too much to the technocrats, strategists, and pollsters, and not enough to what was in here – the heart.
We keep with us one photograph with President Havel, no longer on the mantle just for show and tell, but most importantly to keep with us and to pass on what we’ve witnessed and learned in the past and present about what is right, good, possible, and necessary for humanity in the future. We thank President Havel for inspiring courage and declining to leave Czechoslovakia when others asked him to for his own well-being, saying instead that “The solution of this human situation does not lie in leaving it…,” while his friends were emigrating. We thank him for stirring our assumptions, values, and views. We thank President Václav Havel for bringing to tangible life what were only distant and abstract ideas and images for us, and for helping us understand the causes, effects, and the “what’s next” of history and human action during the 20th and 21st centuries. We thank him for showing us how to fight without violence; it is possible and powerful. And in return, it’s very little but we Czechs, Americans, and more, here to enjoy your Golden City during Christmas, jingled our keys in Wenceslas Square last night, for you, Pane Václav Havel.
Established in 1995, the Georgetown Public Policy Review is the McCourt School of Public Policy’s nonpartisan, graduate student-run publication. Our mission is to provide an outlet for innovative new thinkers and established policymakers to offer perspectives on the politics and policies that shape our nation and our world.