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Leading the 1989 Velvet Revolution
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- Havel’s best role in Czech history was leading the 1989 Velvet Revolution. The Communist state collapsed after the nonviolent rebellion. Havel’s moral power and eloquence inspired the masses, helping the revolution succeed.
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Havel's Civic Forum party played a major role in the Velvet Revolution that toppled the Communist system in Czechoslovakia in 1989. He assumed the presidency shortly thereafter, and was re-elected in a landslide the following year and after Slovak independence in 1993.
Havel’s best role in Czech history was leading the 1989 Velvet Revolution. The Communist state collapsed after the nonviolent rebellion. Havel’s moral power and eloquence inspired the masses, helping the revolution succeed.
Vaclav Havel, Czech playwright and political dissident who, after the fall of communism, was president of Czechoslovakia (1989–92) and of the Czech Republic (1993–2003). He previously had been a prominent participant in the Prague Spring (1968). Learn more about Havel’s life and career.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Deprived of High School Education
- Became A Playwright
- Human Rights Activities
- Jailed For Protest
- The Collapse of The Communist Regime
- Vaclav Havel as President
- Tumor Removed
- Invitation to NATO
- Further Reading
The 1948 Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia radically changed the Havels' lives. Their money and properties were confiscated, and Vaclav's parents had to take menial jobs. The worst deprivation for the family was that Vaclav and his brother were not allowed to attend high school. Fortunately he discovered a loophole in the system by which he coul...
From 1957 to 1959 Havel served in the Czech army, where he helped found a regimental theater company. His experience in the army stimulated his interest in theater, and following his discharge he took a stagehand position at the avant-garde Theater on the Balustrade. The eager would-be playwright attracted the admiration of the theater's director a...
The Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 brought an abrupt end to the cultural flowering of the "Prague Spring" and marked a watershed in Havel's life. He felt he could not remain silent, and so began his long career as a human rights activist with an underground radio broadcast asking Western intellectuals to condemn the invasion and ...
In January 1977 hundreds of Czech intellectuals and artists, Marxists and anti-Communists alike, signed Charter 77, which protested Czechoslovakia's failure to comply with the Helsinki Agreement on human rights. Havel took an active part in the Charter movement and was elected one of its chief spokesmen. As such, he was arrested and jailed early in...
The week following the creation of the forum marked the beginning of the so-called "Velvet Revolution, " by which Czechoslovakia's Communist regime collapsed like a house of cards. With almost dizzying speed, a new, democratic republic was smoothly and bloodlessly established. Havel and the Civic Forum played a decisive role in this revolution, mee...
Havel's government had considerable success in its first year and managed to avoid some of the awkward adjustments faced by other Eastern European countries. Nonetheless, Havel and his country faced some weighty problems. The first of these was the resurgence of Slovakian nationalism, which was stayed by Havel's popularity and a constitution which ...
In January 1995 a crisis occurred. Havel's wife of 32 years died of cancer. One year later, Havel married Czech actress Dagmar Veskrnova. In just a few months, Havel entered a clinic with what was thought to be pneumonia. While performing exploratory surgery, doctors found a tumor on his right lung. The tumor was removed on December 2, along with h...
The positive changes in the former Soviet block country under Havel's leadership led to a landmark event. On July 8, 1997, NATO invited the Czech Republic, along with Poland and Hungary, to be the first Eastern European nation to become a part of the Western Alliance. According to the Associated Press, United States President Bill Clintontold his f...
Of his own works, Disturbing the Peace (1990), set in the form of answers to an interviewer's questions, presents a great deal of otherwise unavailable autobiographical information as well as an explanation of his philosophies. For the general reader, this is the most accessible of his works. Several of his plays, notably The Memorandum (1965) and ...
A New Country. The Czech Republic formed on 1st January 1993 and Vaclav Havel was elected as it’s first President. Politically the country was more mature but still tried to switch to a market economy which conflicted with Havel’s “humanitarian” ideals.
Dec 16, 2021 · Václav Havel was one of the most prominent figures of the Czech cultural and political scene in the 20th century. A child hailing from a privileged family as well as a prisoner and labourer, playwright, writer, the last Czechoslovak and the first Czech president, Václav Havel was that all.
The exhibit chronicles pivotal moments in the life of Václav Havel as a pre-revolutionary dissident, playwright, and as the first President of the Czech Republic following the collapse of the communist regime after the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
