Word: havel
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...cold war ended. And only last week history was further rewritten when Czechoslovakia's onetime reformer Alexander Dubcek, whose effort to achieve "socialism with a human face" was smashed by Soviet tanks in 1968, re- emerged from oblivion to head the National Parliament; shortly thereafter, frequently imprisoned playwright Vaclav Havel was elected President. It was as though the age-old rules of political conflict had been suspended, and the wolf would dwell with the lamb, the leopard would lie down with the kid. Until the Christmas season in Rumania -- with thousands dead, the worst bloodshed in Europe since the Hungarian...
...months after the 1968 Soviet invasion ended the Prague Spring of intellectual freedom in his homeland, Czech playwright Vaclav Havel joined many of his countrymen lining up at the U.S. embassy in quest of a visa. Like most of those in the queue, he had something to flee from: the hard-line new government wanted him out and had banned his works from production or publication. Unlike most of the others, Havel had someplace to go: three of his plays had won acclaim in the West, and he had been offered both a job at New York City's prestigious...
Interesting the past two decades have been. Also turbulent, irritating, at times humiliating and occasionally frightening. As one of a handful of prominent Prague intellectuals who chose neither to flee nor to fall silent but to fight back, Havel was jailed three times for a total of almost five years on the flimsiest of charges. One four-month stretch was served in a cell 12 ft. by 7 ft., which he shared with a burglar. A second imprisonment ended when he nearly died of pneumonia that was neglected, perhaps deliberately, by prison doctors. His last internment, four months...
...Vaclav Havel, playwright and leader of the democracy movement...
...people were extraordinarily civil, almost good-natured, in the way they threw out their leaders. They welcomed Alexander Dubcek, the tragic hero of the original Prague Spring, back into the public spotlight. But the man of the hour was playwright Vaclav Havel, the often imprisoned leader of dissent, who has conjured up what may be the new nemesis of world communism: "the power of the powerless." On Dec. 10 what Havel called the "velvet revolution" swept away the government. In a new Cabinet of 21, there are now eleven noncommunists. The formation of rival parties has been legalized and Civic...