laywright and author Vlaclav Havel was born in 1936 in Prague and was a leading intellectual proponent of human rights and the rights of prisoners under the post WWII Soviet communist system imposed on it in 1945. Havel's plays and articles, which celebrated the strength of Czech cultural life and its strong affinity for democratic concepts, helped lead to Czech President Alexander Dubcek's Prague Spring of 1968. This brief flowering of democratic sentiment was set back by the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in order to force the country back into acceptance of the Stalinist/communist political fold.
Because of his part in the Prague Spring, Havel's plays were blacklisted. In 1975 Havel became famous internationally when he wrote letters to then Czech President Dr. Gustav Husak condemning the oppression of Czech society under the "normalization" process demanded by the Soviets after the Warsaw Pact invasion. In 1977 Havel co-founded Charter 77, the first human rights initiative, and signatories from Charter 77 started the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted. For his troubles Havel was imprisoned three times for a period of five years.
Havel's most important piece of writing was in 1978 when he wrote The Power of the Powerless, a searing analysis of communist totalitarian repression and how it produces, and is dependent on the timid and morally corrupt. Havel showed that moral resistance was the only way to fight this debasement and his work went on to influence other peoples and nations burdened under the yoke of communism. In 1979 Havel helped found and was the head of the Civic Forum, which united various democratic opposition movements in Czechoslovakia leading up to the non-violent Velvet Revolution of 1989.
The Velvet Revolution saw hundreds of thousands of protestors in the streets of Prague demanding the fall of the communist regime. Havel was elected President for the interim period before parliamentary elections in the country. Six months later Havel was duly elected as President for a term of two years. President Havel instituted serious democratic reforms, oversaw the amicable separation of Czechoslovakia into the Czech and Slovak Republics, and met with world leaders. He abdicated early in his term citing personal conflicts but in 1992 he was consulted on the Parliamentary duties of the Czech Presidency. Although he currently suffers from a recurring respiratory illness, Havel continues to this day to speak out for dissidents and against revisionism of Czech history.
