Word: havelent
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...sober up. "For 40 years you have heard on this day from the mouths of my predecessors . . . how our country is flourishing, how many more millions of tons of steel we have produced, how we are all happy, how we believe in our government," the newly elected President Vaclav Havel told the nation. "I assume you have not named me to this office so that I too should...
...inaugural address, Havel's talk was an extraordinary jeremiad -- eloquent, gentle, but unstinting in its criticism. It was the last kind of speech that might have been expected from a man who had just won a war decades long and whose name had been cried out like a victory chant in the same Wenceslas Square the night before. Havel noted the achievement of 1989 by paraphrasing 17th century theologian Comenius -- "Your government, my people, has returned to you" -- but his speech was the antithesis of triumphalism. Instead, it was a bracing recitation of urgent needs, an inventory of the damage...
...unemployment and widespread bankruptcies. In Sofia the communist government held its first set of talks with opposition leaders. But already the new government was faced with another challenge: a countrywide general strike and mass protests against the restoration of religious and cultural freedom to the country's minority Turks. Havel's government set out on a course of economic restructuring by devaluing the crown from a rate of nine to the dollar to 38 for tourists and 17 for commercial transactions, thus taking aim at a huge black market in currency and possibly preparing the way for full convertibility...
Even at low ebb, Havel was protected in some measure by his prominence abroad. Authorities made no effort to uproot him from the handsome granite apartment block built by his father and also tenanted by his brother, where Havel has room after room lined with books and videotapes, the elegance tempered by big beer-hall ashtrays, overflowing with butts, on seemingly every table. The car that the police most often vandalized was a white Mercedes. Although his manner is earthy and direct and his short, dumpy frame and mustache bring to mind a small, playful walrus, Havel still...
PROFILE: Czech man of conscience Vaclav Havel...