Czech playwright-turned-president whose absurdist theater critiqued the regime and whose dissident leadership ended communist rule
In February 1969, Havel published 'Český úděl?' in the journal Tvář, rebutting Kundera's lyrical nationalism: 'I do not believe in this fate… first and foremost we ourselves are the masters of our fate.'
Czech playwright, dissident, and statesman. His absurdist plays The Garden Party (1963) and The Memorandum (1965) won international acclaim for their satire of the Communist system. After the Prague Spring was crushed in 1968, he answered Milan Kundera's 'Český úděl' with 'Český úděl?', arguing the reforms had merely restored freedoms that existed thirty years earlier, and turned fully to dissident politics. He co-founded Charter 77, endured nearly four years in prison (1979–1983), led the Civic Forum in the 1989 Velvet Revolution, and became the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1963The Garden Party premieres, playwright debut
- 1968Resists via Radio Free Czechoslovakia during Warsaw Pact invasion
- 1969Publishes 'Český úděl?' in Tvář, rebutting Kundera
- 1977Co-founds Charter 77; first spokesperson
- 1979–1983Imprisoned for dissident activity; writes Letters to Olga
- 1989Leads Civic Forum in the Velvet Revolution
- 1989–1992President of Czechoslovakia
- 1993–2003President of the Czech Republic
Related historical events
- 1968The Prague SpringPlaywright who rebutted Kundera with 'The Czech Fate?' and offered a sober assessment of the Prague SpringIn February 1969 he published 'The Czech Fate?' in Tvář, rebutting Kundera: what the Prague Spring achieved was merely the restoration of basic freedoms commonplace in the civilized world.
- 1975The Helsinki AccordsCharter 77 co-spokespersonIn January 1977 he co-issued Charter 77, demanding that Czechoslovakia honor the Helsinki Final Act and its domestic human-rights laws.
- 1989The Revolutions of 1989Velvet Revolution leaderIn 1989, he led Civic Forum and the Velvet Revolution.
The Vaněk Plays and Samizdat Circulation
In 1975, excluded from official culture, Havel worked as an unskilled labourer at the Krakonoš brewery in Trutnov. That experience shaped Audience (1975), the one-act play in which Ferdinand Vaněk first appeared. Vaněk stood in for Havel himself: a banned playwright and dissident, while the brewmaster who shares the stage with him has been asked to spy on him. What begins as an apparent informer's errand becomes, over a long comic dialogue, a portrait of a man more sympathetic than villainous. Havel returned Vaněk to the stage in Unveiling (1975) and Protest (1978), and the character became an emblem of Czech dissident writing; friends and colleagues, including Pavel Landovský, composed their own Vaněk plays.
Because Havel's work was banned, Audience was not staged in any theatre. It was performed in living rooms and circulated as samizdat, and a widely distributed radio production helped make it well known inside Czechoslovakia. In November and December 1975 he founded the samizdat venture Dispatch Editions to circulate texts by banned authors, while Andrej Krob's amateur company Divadlo Na tahu staged The Beggar's Opera in Horní Počernice, the only attempted domestic production of a Havel play of these years; those involved, audience members included, were fired and persecuted. This network for evading censorship fed into the dissident community that formed the base of Charter 77 in the late 1970s.