Word: avert
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...artist, Havel has always been a political prophet, prone to jeremiads. In Largo Desolato, the hero faces unspecified tortures, which he can avert if he changes his name and declares himself not to be the author of his works. Although he ultimately says no, he wavers for a moment, and that is enough to satisfy the state. In Temptation, Havel retells the Faust myth in terms of the ego-driven distortions of truth committed by his compatriots. In the essay The Power of the Powerless, he lambastes an archetypal grocer who places a poster saying WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE...
...democratic government and Ceausescu permitted no institutions to develop outside his control. The Communist Party, if it is not completely discredited in the eyes of the people, will have to enter negotiations with nascent political organizations, if they can take solid shape. With security men still fighting desperately to avert a reckoning with the nation they brutalized, the regular army will play a stabilizing role...