Vaclav Havel: “If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become president.”

Today is the birthday of Vaclav Havel. (Again with the connection to this post below) I first became aware of him in college, when we had to read a couple of his plays. Plays that, naturally, could not be performed in his home country – but made him famous the world over. One of my favorite things Vaclav Havel said (beside the title of this post) is how he managed to live under Communism for so many years, how he handled it. He said he lived by the rule of “as if”. “I decided to behave as if I were free.”

In honor of his birthday, I will post links to my insanely obsessive essays I wrote about Czechoslovakia.

The Czech Republic: History

The Czech Republic: The 20th Century

The Czech Republic: The Spirit of Prague

And lastly, in honor of Vaclav Havel, I will re-post something I wrote about a certain speech he made on January 1, 1990. Still has the power to give me chills, no matter how many times I read it:

Vaclav Havel made a speech on January 1, 1990, immediately following all of the extraordinary changes which had occurred in his country. This speech along with many many others made it into the book I have of “The Greatest Speeches of the 20th Century”.

The first time I read it, I was sitting on a crowded subway. By the end, tears were rolling down my face. In retrospect, I think that is hysterical. If anyone noticed I was crying, I am sure they would never have guessed the reason – and would have thought I was insane if they had asked:

“Ma’am, are you all right? Why are you crying? Did your boyfriend break up with you?”

and I had answered:

“Oh … uh … no. I’m crying because of Vaclav Havel’s speech to the Czech people in 1990.”

“…..Oh…”

Havel’s speech, broadcast on the radio, set the tone for all that was to follow. It is referred to as “the contaminated moral environment” speech. After decades of double-speak, decades of being lied to by their own government, decades of muffling their true sentiments, Vaclav Havel stood up and told the truth. He had been preparing for this moment since the 1960s.

And that’s another thing. We, as human beings, can recognize truth when we hear it.

Czeslaw Milosz, another famous dissident, brilliant poet, said in his speech accepting the Nobel Prize: “In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.” This is the atmosphere into which Vaclav Havel spoke, on that momentous day in 1990.

We know when we’re being lied to, deceived. Truth is unmistakable, and Havel knew that. And Havel did not let the Czech people off the hook – another reason why the “velvet revolution” was so amazing. It was not about pointing fingers, screaming, “YOU DID THIS TO US”. Havel encouraged the Czech people to take responsibility for their destinies, to take responsibility for having endured the tyranny for so long. The “contaminated moral environment” is not only about the Communist regime. He addressed that comment to every Czech person who had tolerated living under tyranny. No passing the buck, no blame. Take responsibility.

Imagine. How many leaders ever speak to their people in such a way? This speech is one of the myriad reasons that Vaclav Havel is one of my political heroes.

Quotes from his extraordinary speech – I edited it a bit – but I am sure you can find the entire text online, or in books:

Havel’s speech, Jan. 1990

Our country is not flourishing. The enormous creative and spiritual potential of our nation is not being used sensibly … We have polluted our soil, our rivers and forests, bequeathed to us by our ancestors, and we have today the most contaminated environment in Europe. Adult people in our country die earlier than in most other European countries.

But all this is still not the main problem. The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore each other, to care only about ourselves. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility, or forgiveness lost their depth and dimensions, and for many of us they represented only psychological peculiarities, or they resembled gone-astray greetings from ancient times, a little ridiculous …

The previous regime — armed with its arrogant and intolerant ideology — reduced man to a force of production and nature to a tool of production … It reduced gifted and autonomous people, skillfully working in their own country, to nuts and bolts of some monstrously huge, noisy, and stinking machine, whose real meaning is not clear to anyone …

When I talk about contaminated moral atmosphere … I am talking about all of us. We had all become used to the totalitarian system and accepted it as an unchangeable fact and thus helped to perpetuate it. In other words, we are all — though naturally to differing extremes — responsible for the operation of the totalitarian machinery; none of us is just its victim: we are all also its co-creators …

We have to accept this legacy as a sin we committed against ourselves. If we accept it as such, we will understand that it is up to us all, and up to us only, to do something about it. We cannot blame the previous rulers for everything, not only because it would be untrue but also because it could blunt the duty that each of us faces today, namely, the obligation to act independently, freely, reasonably and quickly … Freedom and democracy include participation and therefore responsibility from us all.

If we realize this, then all the horrors that the new Czechoslovak democracy inherited will cease to appear so terrible. If we realize this, hope will return to our hearts …

In the effort to rectify matters … we have something to lean on. The recent period — and in particular, the last six weeks of our peaceful revolution — has shown the enormous human, moral, and spiritual potential and civil culture that slumbered in our society under the enforced mask of apathy. Whenever someone categorically claimed that we were this or that, I always objected that society is a very mysterious creature and that it is not wise to trust only the face it presents to you. I am happy that I was not mistaken. Everywhere in the world people wonder where those meek, humiliated, skeptical, and seemingly cynical citizens of Czechoslovakia found the marvelous strength to shake from their shoulders in several weeks and in a decent and peaceful way the totalitarian yoke…

There are free elections and an election campaign ahead of us. Let us not allow this struggle to dirty the so far clean face of our gentle revoltuion … It is not really important now which party, club, or group will prevail in the elections. The important thing is that the winners will be the best of us, in the moral, civil, political and professional sense, regardless of their political affiliations …

In conclusion, I would like to say that I want to be a president who will speak less and work more. To be a president who will … always be present among his fellow citizens and listen to them well.

You may ask what kind of republic I dream of. Let me reply: I dream of a republic independent, free, and democratic, of a republic economically prosperous and yet socially just, in short, of a humane republic which serves the individual and which therefore holds the hope that the individual will serve it in turn. Of a republic of well-rounded people, because without such it is impossible to solve any of our problems, human, economic, ecological, social, or political.

People, your government has returned to you!