The man behind the Czech people’s revolt

Press, 11 December 1989, Page 12

The man behind the Czech people’s revolt

The long-persecuted playwright, Vaclav Havel, is the man in charge of Czechoslovakia’s quiet rebellion against the Communist Party. He is now spoken of as a possible future President. This profile is from the “Independent.”

WRITERS AND artists in Western Europe have sometimes expressed envy of their colleagues in Eastern Europe, whose importance — meaured by the desperation of their Governments to keep them locked up — is so visible. There is, in reality, little to be envious of. But it is a kind of tribute to the power of Vaclav Havel’s words that he has been so regularly harassed and jailed. What is remarkable, from a Western perspective, is that he occupies a crucial political position in Czechoslovakia. Playwrights in Britain may bluster, but their stance is not seen as central to the politics of the country. Mr Havel, on the other hand, is the acknowledged leader of the opposition, as well as his country’s most distinguished playwright. Recently the Swedish Foreign Minister flew to Prague to present him with the Olof Palme prize for his “courageous struggle for democracy and human rights.” In other East European countries, too, intellectuals have been at the forefront of the opposition. Senior members of Solidarity in Poland include a professor of medieval history and several philosophers. In East Germany, leading figures of the New Forum opposition group include a painter and many writers. In Hungary, too, intellectuals have played the most important part in getting the opposition off the ground. But the status of Mr Havel, playwright and opposition guru, is unique. He reacts almost with bemusement to being regarded as little short of a national hero. He has often emphasised that he does not wish to be seen as a “professional politician,” whatever that means. He has also declared his preference for being “kingmaker rather than king.” But he has never sought to disown responsibilities. Having made the choice to stand up for what he regarded as the moral absolutes — the need for a society of openness and honesty — he has always made it clear that he is not prepared to back down. Jail has never affected that choice. He was born into a relatively wealthy background: his father was a building contractor, responsible for some of the most important buildings in Prague. The Czechoslovak authorities have used his family background to emphasise his alleged “bourgeois tendencies,” as though to say: “Naturally, he is against the communist government. After all, his family background means that he is a natural enemy of the people.” Mr Havel has always insisted that the opposite is the case: that his cushioned upbringing gave

him a sense of responsibility, a desire that there should be genuine equality in Czechoslovak society, rather than the Orwellian some-are-more-equal-than-others rule by violence which has applied until now. His plays, performed internationally, are often understood by foreigners as absurdist and surreal. But that is to misunderstand the surreal nature of the Czechoslovak police-state: Kafkaesque is an appropriate adjective for the native land of Franz Kafka himself. For Czechs, Mr Havel’s plays are entirely real in their absurdity. When a BBC “Bookmark” programme showed an interview with Czechslovak apparatchiks (who explained why Havel’s works were banned), and intercut the interviews with scenes from Havel’s own plays, it was a close-run thing as to which seemed more surreal. As the Communist Party leader, Milo Jakes, admitted at a private meeting — which, embarrassingly for Mr Jakes, was secretly taped, and copies widely distributed in Prague — the constant harassment of Mr Havel has served only to bring his name to the notice of a wider public and increase his popularity and prestige. The demonstrators constantly chant Havel’s name, and he is looked to as a kind of potential saviour. Even before the latest upsurge of popular protests, there were signs of tiny retreats by the authorities. In October, extracts from one of Havel’s plays were performed — the first time for almost 20 years. The audience loved it, applauding wildly. The authorities were less pleased, and cancelled subsequent performances. Even then — when 10,000 rather than 200,000 was considered a large demonstration — things were beginning to stir: actors in other Prague theatres said they would strike if the Havel extracts were not restored to the repertoire., Until this month, cocking a snook at the authorities has been as important a means of resistance in Czechoslovakia as going out on the streets. On Mr Havel’s birthday, supporters arranged for his photograph to be published in an official paper — using the name of a character from Havel’s own autobiographical plays. Czechs loved the joke. Now things are more serious. Mr Havel, who insists he is at the

centre of politics only because of circumstance, could find himself negotiating the impossible — which has become a routine part of the agenda in East Europe — free elections, in which the communists would undoubtedly be voted out. Already, he has needed constantly to hide in order to get rid of the growing attention of unwanted visitors — more often sympathetic than the police. His courtesy extended to all comers. Only in the last month has he got a telephone answering machine to reduce the number of requests that he attends to. The machine says plaintively that the caller should ask: is it really only Vaclav Havel who can fulfil your request? Until recently, he continued to be singled out for punishment. In January, he attempted to lay flowers on the twentieth anniversary of the death of Jan Palach, who burnt himself to death in protest at the Soviet invasion of August 1968. Mr Havel was arrested, and sentenced to eight months imprisonment. After an international outcry, the sentence was reduced to four months, as a reminder that even totalitarian regimes are not entirely impermeable to criticism. In the summer, he was one of the main signatories to “Several Sentences,” a petition for greater democracy which was the biggest single demonstration of opposition for 20 years. It gained 30,000 signatures, not enough to make a revolution but bigger than anything before, and enough to make the authorities edgy. Mr Havel was a co-founder of Charter 77, the dissident movement formed 12 years earlier, but which the authorities had attempted ruthlessly to crush. Mr Havel, who is now 53, was jailed from 1979 to 1983, his longest single period behind bars. The letters to his wife during that period were subpublished, entitled simply “Letters to Olga.” If that was the longest imprisonment, it was far from being the last. Even at the end of last month, just ahead of the demonstrations on October 28 (the country’s national day) which were a quieter prelude to the present mass protests, the police dragged him away from his sick-bed, and only a doctor’s protests succeeded in getting

him released into hospital. Vaclav Havel has always been seen as one of the leading opposition theorists of Eastern Europe, whose work is looked to with awe by, say, the neighbouring Poles. But, as he himself has remarked in unhappier times: it is all very well having a theory of the opposition, but what about having an opposition itself? Suddenly, that has changed. It was not that Czechoslovaks ever supported the regime. Privately, everybody has agreed for 20 years that the Government had no legitimacy; it had been put in power by Soviet tanks. But a deeply ingrained sense of self-preservation prevented them going on the streets to say so. Some argue that a greater sense of leadership was needed, from Mr Havel himself. But he relied more on the force of history. Czechoslovakia, he declared recently, was “a pressure cooker, which could explode at any time." The question now is how far the pressure for change will come from the workers, not just from the students and intellectuals. That is what is still partly lacking — although the workers’ movement, too, appears to be growing. Already it is clear that Mr Havel was justified in his belief, expressed in an article written for the “Independent” earlier this year, that dissidents were “ceasing to be seen as some isolated group of suicides and madmen, for so many years silently admired by the public but unable to expect from them visible support.” Already, the voice of protest can be heard loud and clear on the streets of Prague. Czechoslovakia, with its long democratic traditions, and with the still-vivid memory of the Prague

Spring of 1968 — the "socialism with a human face" that was suppressed by tanks — is awakening. Vaclav Havel has spent years waiting for this moment. Now, he finds that Czechoslovakia, too, has an opposition — more than just the “ghetto” (to use his own phrase) which he inhabited for so many years, and of which he speaks almost wistfully today. Already before the latest explosion, Mr Havel had no doubt that Czechoslovakia must come to the boil, soon. Talk of the “Schweikian” nature of the Czech people — always avoiding open resistance, and somehow getting by — was, he suggested, misleading. The present upheavals have proved him right. There is no certainty that the current unrest will escalate with the same momentum as in East Germany. Equally, however, there is no doubt that an era is drawing to a close. The name of former Communist Party leader Alexander Dubcek — only a symbol, perhaps, but an important symbol, none the less — is on everybody’s lips these days. The other mostmentioned name is Vaclav Havel. In 1989, the unbelievable seems routine in East Europe.. Will we see Vaclav Havel, who in the last couple of weeks has adressed cheering crowds on Wenceslas Square, as prime minister or president of a democratic Czechoslovakia? It still seems unthinkable. ;• But, at a time whep Splidarity has formed a government in Poland, when the Berlin Wall has had gaping holes knocked in it, and when even Bulgaria’s new leader is hinting at free elections, it seems impossible that Czechoslovakia does not have a trick or two up its sleeve.