Word: vaclav
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
Zealous idealists rarely get a chance to lead, and when they do, they rarely show much aptitude for the give-and-take of politics, the careful timing, the restraint. Yet in an irony more exquisite than any he ever envisioned for the stage, Vaclav Havel became not only the conscience but also the commonsense leader of the mass movement that led to Czechoslovakia's orderly ouster of its communist leaders. Having inspired fellow citizens by his rhetoric and unrelenting example, he heard them demand that he take over as head of state. That was not for him, he said...
...born to wealth. His father was a real estate developer. An even richer uncle owned hotels and the Barrandov movie studios, which remain the center of Czechoslovak filmmaking. One of his English-language translators, Czech emigre Vera Blackwell, has said, "If Czechoslovakia had remained primarily a capitalist society, Vaclav Havel would be just about the richest man in the country." Instead, by the time Havel was a teenager, the communists had dispossessed the family. More painful still, Stalinist rules barred youths of upper-class descent from full-time education beyond early adolescence. Undaunted, Havel took a menial...
PROFILE: Czech man of conscience Vaclav Havel...