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Welcome to Butchcast.
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My name is Oliver Heutzler, and I'm very excited about today's episode.
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Before I tell you what it's about, please hit subscribe, tell your friends and foes about it, and also make sure you check out our YouTube channel that we've recently launched.
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Now, I grew up on the border between former East Germany and Czechoslovakia.
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I could literally see the border guards in my village when I grew up.
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We have family members who've got Czech or Sudeten German origins.
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So I was always very close to the Czech culture.
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Still have some remote family there.
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Been a massive fan of the country, the culture my whole life.
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And every time I'm in Europe, I'm definitely always spending some time in the country.
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Now I remember a very turbulent time when uh all of Eastern Europe was on the brink, and uh on Putschcast, we've done a few episodes on the collapse of the Soviet Union and uh all that came with it, military conflict.
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And we all know what happened in Yugoslavia as well in those days.
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And there was a time when um when there were rumors that similar things could happen in Czechoslovakia because that's also a country that broke apart.
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However, the leaders at the time were very different people compared to the ones on the Balkans.
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And uh there was one particular leader that's still well known today.
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His name is Václav Havel, and I've heard of him my whole life, obviously given where I grew up, but you may not have.
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But I'm glad to have my co-host in the studio today, David, who's also heard of Václav Havel, but not because he lived on the border, but Václav Havel.
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So uh studied at university.
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Uh also my father, who um has had connections to uh Czechoslovakia and uh um now Czechia um through relationships with uh individuals and also family friends, was a fan um of his and uh um actually did meet him very briefly at some point.
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So he's someone that I've been aware of growing up, uh someone I uh was able to study and now I've had the pleasure of reading uh David Barton's uh book, Unfinished Revolution.
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And I think we're gonna ask why that title as well.
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Yeah, and um, just for everyone who's missed it, so that's what the book looks like.
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It's uh heavily linked on our website, putcast.com.
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You can find all the details there where to purchase it.
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But uh what about the horse's mouth?
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He's here with us today.
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Um, after a few complications, we finally have him online.
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David Barton, welcome to Putschcast.
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It's a pleasure to be here.
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Where do we find you today?
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Um not in Prague, I guess.
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No, not in Prague.
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I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with my daughter and and a wife.
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And like us, you've written a book about the man, and David just explained how he's heard about Vacilov Havel on the other side of the world.
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I've given my bit of background.
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What's your connection to the man?
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Well, um, the book was a was a labor of and um I moved to what was then called Czechoslovakia in 1990, right after the wall had come down, and that was, as you probably know, just a magical time in Eastern Europe.
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For me, it was like uh stepping into a fairy tale world.
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It was profoundly moving to me.
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Um, especially the piece as as an American who grew up in the Cold War, of just crossing the iron curtain.
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It was such a symbolic thing to to go into the heart of totalitarianism, if I could put it that way, and to live there.
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And to see and experience the people who had just gone through an incredible revolution.
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I remember it too, and everyone talks about, you know, the fall of the Berlin Wall, but uh for us, the real celebrations also happened much later when people could cross the border freely, because when I was a child, there was, you know, border guards everywhere, dogs, barbed wire, because people always think about a divide between east and west, but it was also between east and east.
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We couldn't just cross the border and and walk into Czechoslovakia.
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It was heavily regulated, and you needed a visa every time you wanted to go.
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And even for us, Czechoslovakia was not the promised land, but there were much higher living standards there at the time.
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Uh the shops had a lot more on offer than they did in the late 80s in East Germany, for sure.
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I remember half my school gear came from there, and it was always good to have um relatives, plus it was a few more Westerners in Prague even before the fall.
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But yeah, the jubilation that happened between the two villages that were the first time reconnected again since World War II was a very moving moment for my whole family, and
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it was a very long night.
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Personal stories aside.
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The picture is in the 1980s, the um Czechoslovakia was still a hardcore communist country, but um communism was faltering all throughout uh Eastern Europe.
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Uh, Gorbachev was elected in the Soviet Union in 1985.
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It was a period of glasnost and perka.
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Gorbachev had had announced that uh there would be no repeat of the Prague Spring when the Soviet Union invaded in order to restore the communist state.
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And that really weakened the hand of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia.
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I remember a lot of pollution myself in the Eastern Bloc, and I think Vaclav Havel himself.
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Um today it's almost a non-topic for the last five years, all of a sudden climate change and pollution is sort of thing anymore.
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But it was a very prominent topic, wasn't it?
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Like the state of the environment.
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Yes, absolutely.
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Especially in that uh, what is that, the north northwest quadrant, um, where the where the acid rain just devastated the forests.
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Of course, it was not just the forests and the acid rain, lead in the water and and so on and so forth from the uh industrial devastation during those communist years.
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Now, David, leading up to today's episode, we're both excited to to talk about Vaclav Havel.
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But we also said that one hour may not be enough to discuss this man, and there's there's many aspects, but we decided for today's podcast to talk about three milestones, so to speak, in his biography, and they're very relevant to our podcast.
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Biography-wise, he was born in 36.
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We then said we want to talk about the 48 coup, and then the 1968 Prague Spring, obviously, leading up to the Velvet Revolution where he was central in 89.
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So that's our focus today.
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And again, for more, please read um the book, You know, Havel An Unfinished Revolution.
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But I don't know much about his childhood, David.
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36, these are very historic years, and I touched on it before.
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So this was the interwar Czechoslovakia.
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He came from a Czech family, but I also know that the country was taken over by the Nazis about two years later.
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So how did he grow up?
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He was born, um, some would say, with a silver spoon in his mouth.
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It's one of the most prominent families in in uh Czechoslovakia.
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Uh his uncle Milos Havel was a film magnet.
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He had the largest film studio in uh uh, I believe the largest in Europe, if not the one of the largest.
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And and his father was a very prominent businessman as as his grandfather had been.
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When he's two, uh Nazi Germany invades in 1948, uh at the during the communist coup d'etat, the family loses everything.
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So the film studio is confiscated, his uncle Milosh is sent into a prison camp uh for hard labor as a class enemy.
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His father loses his restaurant and his businesses and becomes a menial worker.
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And Havel himself, after the communist coup d'etat, he's at a private academy called King George's Academy.
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And his roommate is um Milosh Foreman, if you know the movie director, uh who later made one flew over Cuckoo's Nest and um Amadeus.
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And um they're both at King's George Academy, and they both get kicked out right after the communist coup d'etat.
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Um, Milosh Foreman of all things urinating on the child of a communist leader, uh, which give gives you a sense of how he felt about the communists and Havel because he was labeled a class enemy.
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And uh he was forbidden from attending the the uh public high school and had to go to night school to get a high school degree.
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So he wasn't allowed to finish year 12.
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So 12 years old he was when the you know the coup happened.
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Um I just want to dig into that a little deeper.
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So did his family did they collaborate with the Nazis, or was that was it just about class struggle, why they were punished so heavily by the communists?
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Or was there did they have any dirt on them from then from the occupation years?
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Um as far as his father, it was all about class struggle.
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Uh for for listeners who don't know a lot about communist or Europe, all of the private property from all families, um, including my wife's family, by the way, who had a um small grocery store uh uh in a little town called Zlin and had their building confiscated and and not returned for uh over 40 years after the Velvet Revolution.
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So it didn't just happen to the Havels, it happened to everyone in the country.
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It was a different issue with with me Losh Havel.
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There was some question whether he'd collaborated with the Nazis.
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He continued to run the film studio, and he said it he said that he did it as a uh loyal Czech citizen who was trying to save jobs of the
people under him, and he was exonerated in the end uh during a trial that was conducted by the Communist Party.
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Yeah, I remember um Joseph Gelbert had a love affair with a Czech actress uh himself.
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David, over to you.
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In the first section of your book, when you do talk about his teenage years, you mentioned that he always had an amplified tendency to see the absurd dimensions of the world.
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And I think that sort of informed some of his writing later on.
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Um and the line that I uh I jotted down here was the fact that his time as a playwright informed this idea that this communism's fatal desire to simplify the world.
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A big part of his um writing is about the humanity that gets drained away by these systems.
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Um then you mentioned that he at 16 he got drawn into the gritty reality of poetry, literature, and filmmaking.
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Um can you tell us a little bit about that period?
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So from his late teens into uh, you know, his nascent sort of um opposition to the communist regime after 1948.
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Um well, Havel was a voracious reader.
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Um his uh parents were well connected in the literary world as well as the world of acting, and um they had a weekend retreat called Havlov, and there was a steady stream of historical figures going uh in and out of uh Havlov.
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And um it fed this voracious desire of Havel to know the world in all sorts of very um complicated ways, I suppose, most prominently in his life, uh in his choice of profession.
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All the doors were closed to him.
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He he he did a menial job for a few years, he wasn't any good at it whatsoever.
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And um his his uh father, apparently, as far as I can tell, uh called up an old friend, uh Jan Vedek, uh who ran the ABC Theater and asked him if he could find a job for Havel as a uh stage hand.
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And so that's how Havel spent his twenties, uh uh moving chairs on the stage.
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And he gradually became more and more interested in the theater.
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And he moved it over to a small experimental theater called the Theater of the Bellustrade, where he had the freedom to begin writing, began producing, began directing stages as the communist system loosened up in the early 1960s.
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Because you do also mention that he um Havel remembered the late fifties, it sounds like when he was working at the theater, as a time of the first kind of widespread collapse of illusions and um this idea of he he you talk about um his writing about the being or the sense of being, and then um this was essential in resisting the dogmatism of totalitarian rule.
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So the it is the these ideas seem to be sort of uh coalescing at this point, the ones that inform um his probably more famous uh publications.
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So is that it it's the late fifties, early sixties when he starts to become uh more prominent and more known in these um in these circles in terms of um writing or ideas and literature?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And uh uh uh of course in the in the late 50s he's a complete unknown, but he founds uh a group of young intellectuals and poets and playwrights, Milosh Forman's one of them, um, who begin meeting at the Slavia Cafe, which is a beautiful cafe that's still there on the Vlotova River, right across from the National Theater.
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And they meet every Saturday morning to talk about books, literature, art.
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And uh uh they begin making excursions out to see the the the band writers, the the people who are just producing in their house now.
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And they go see them one by one.
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The great writers of Czechoslovakia are no longer publishable.
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And that becomes a sort of education of sorts.
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And thus this group, the young intellectuals around Havel, begin developing their own theory about uh the what is the value of art.
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That uh art doesn't exist on its own, but it it carries a sort of moral weight.
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And I think this is something that that you really find uh quite heavily in in Eastern Europe.
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I don't know that you can find it in my country, I'm not sure whether you can find it in Australia, that um the artist is a kind of public figure with a duty to the culture, duty to help people see in new and complicated ways.
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Or in Havel's the theory he later develops is to develop, let's say on the stage, an interesting level of fantasy that might be absurd, but helps you see the world in in new ways and helps dispel some of the illusions of the era.
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It's that that period that shaped the late 20th century and the way our generation grew up as well, right?
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With those um towering figures of intellectuals who who are not in opposition but in a challenging way, always, no matter what society they're in, look at the status quo and and with an artistic lens, uh give you an alternative to how things could be.
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Did he do that from day one?
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So his early works were they very innocent or was there a political element or a philosophical element from the start?
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Well, I think there was a philosophical element from the start.
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And if you look at his at his poetry, for instance, that he's writing as a youth, uh in the letters he writes about the poetry, um he has this idea that um uh art doesn't begin with the creation of the art.
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Art begins with the way one actually lives, with the with the he talks about the way he walks around Prague as an artist, trying to see the city as an artist and to to feel what it's like to be alive and in the city and what that city has to say to him, and what his obligations are to himself and as a citizen.
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And the art springs out of that rather than the other way around.
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That art comes from a we might say today, this wouldn't be his words, but a life well lived.
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Moving towards um the next milestone that we were going to talk about, 1968, by by this stage he had uh garnered some um you could say notoriety, I suppose.
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Can you talk to us about um uh how he was viewed within uh Czechoslovakia and even if he had an international or uh whether there was an international sort of presence for him um in the lead up to 1968?
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Well, by the mid-60s, um, you know, Havel is is a rock star, uh the most beloved uh playwright in the country, and he writes uh uh a couple of uh just extraordinary plays, um, or at least they felt extraordinary at the time.
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The first one is the Garden Party, which is about alienation in society, and another big play was the memorandum, which is um uh really about the way bureaucracy is manipulating people in society.
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It's hard to even express um how these hit the culture where where uh uh before the mid-sixties there'd been so much censorship.
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I talked to a number of of philosophers and intellectuals who vividly remembered what it was like to show up at the theater on the Balustrade, which is a a very small experimental theater with a wood burning stove in the back where Havel put on his plays.
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And that this was one of their the most explosive periods in their life, and they loved the place so much they would they would go back and see them two, three, four or five times.
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At the same time, uh uh his plays were being picked up abroad, both in uh London and New York City, so that uh in 1968 he was actually invited to go to New York City.
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He's wandering around uh Alphabet City and Greenwich Village, and uh Milosh Foreman, once again his old roommate, is there in New York because he's immigrating in the United States to later become a famous film director, and they cat around Greenwich Village, and Havel is just enamored with New York City in 1968.
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There's wonderful, you know, clothes show showing him in, you know, what for him would be groovy clothes and sunglasses, and he goes to Central Park.
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Martin Luther King has just been killed, but Coreta Scott King is in Central Park at an enormous rally that he walks with them.
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And he's infused with this idea of civil rights, which he brings back with him in April of 1968 when he returns to Czechoslovakia, and that's the so-called Prague Spring, where the president Alexander Dubček has uh has announced the the loosening of travel restrictions, which allowed Pavel to go to New York City, and the loosening of censorship.
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It's an enormously creative time, you know, until uh August 1968 when the Soviet Union uh invades on the night of the 21st uh in order to shut everything down.
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And we will definitely dedicate an entire episode to the Prague Spring on its own and confirming my friends in Australia with Czech background, their parents came exactly during that period.
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So the small expat community in Australia, these old people that left in 68, 69, whenever they got out, and and some of them returned after 1990, and they were literally sitting out those stark decades of communism that were to follow.
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Let me add one story about August 21st, because I think it's kind of fun.
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It gives you a sense of flavor of those years.
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Havel had returned with records he bought in New York City of the Bee Gees.
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Now, now why he liked the Bee Gees, I have no idea.
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Another Australian connection there.
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Uh there's a party in a small town called Lieberetz, which is maybe 40 or 50 miles from his mountain cottage.
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And he goes there with a famous actor uh called Jan Trieska, and they're partying all night long.
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They're playing these American records, and at 4 a.m., someone stops the party and says, I think I hear tanks in the street.
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That was the beginning of the Soviet invasion.
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After daybreak, they all go to the main square in uh uh Libeteretz where the Soviet tanks are and Soviet troops, and uh someone approaches Havel and says uh that they have a house near a radio transmitter and they know how to hook up uh microphones to the so they start a pirate radio station that lasts for somewhere around seven to ten days, broadcasting news of the invasion, uh uh information about where troops are, as well as organizing uh teams of youth who would go around town switching the uh street signs to confuse Soviet soldiers.
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And uh so that just gives us a little flavor of the Soviet invasion and the the attempted resistance for about uh one to two weeks until uh the country's betrayed by Alexander
Dubchek.
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What you just described, linking back to my personal connection, I know exactly the square you're talking about.
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I know Liberec really well.
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It's it's 20 minutes from my home village.
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And those Soviet tanks did come down our street and uh through a tiny village called Pedroviche, which is Peters Village, which is on the other side of um of uh the ridge that we live off.
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And my my family in the village still talk about that today, how how scary that night was when they just heard nothing but tanks and tanks, because there was obviously hundreds of thousands of um Soviet soldiers, uh Red Army soldiers in East Germany.
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That's mainly where they came from in the north, and and that Vaclav Havel had this personal connection.
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One question um I've had still from what you talked about before.
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So there was this theater place, it's so romantic, by the way.
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All the all the stories are so romantic, and it's like um you're shrouded in smoke, and you can you can just really picture what it was like and in 68, what a year it was.
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Um was he was he supported by the government at the time?
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So was he in the good books for a while?
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Because you do need a platform.
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Usually in communist countries, you need to either have some sort of permits or or have some sort of stage support to even get your shows out there.
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Was he in favor of the government for a while?
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Well, well, that will that was the lucky break for him, I think, and what really uh made his life, perhaps, which is um he could have never done what he did in what he called the Big Stone Theaters, the National Theater, any of the big theaters.
00:23:35.039 --> 00:23:41.519
The theater in the Bellustrade is a little nothing theater out in the corner that nobody paid attention to.
00:23:41.759 --> 00:24:02.160
And while it's true, yeah, you had to have papers, they had their little tricks and devices to work with government censors, I think in many ways because uh Havel's plays are so strange and bizarre and intellectual, I'm not sure the government censors knew what was going on.
00:24:02.720 --> 00:24:16.319
So Havel would purposefully add things into scenes that he knew would be objectional to the censors, so he could control what they took out because it was their job to take some stuff out.
00:24:17.599 --> 00:24:18.160
Smart.
00:24:18.400 --> 00:24:19.759
Smart from day one.
00:24:20.319 --> 00:24:22.880
Um you've just said something interesting as well.
00:24:23.039 --> 00:24:26.640
You said, did you say Dubczyk betrayed the Prague Spring?
00:24:26.960 --> 00:24:27.440
Yeah.
00:24:27.680 --> 00:24:57.039
Um the first thing the Soviets did uh uh before dawn on uh this would have been August 22nd, 1968, is uh the tanks rolled straight up to Prague Castle, where the administrative offices are, and they arrested the upper leadership of the government, including Alexander Dubczyk, who was the secretary of the Communist Party, uh kidnapped him, you would say, put him on an airplane and sent him straight to Moscow.
00:24:58.079 --> 00:25:18.799
And under duress for more than a week, he finally decided to sign papers where he uh recanted on the reforms of the Prague Spring and uh voluntarily decided that Czechoslovakia would roll back all of the civil reforms and civil rights that were being implemented.
00:25:19.039 --> 00:25:21.599
And this was announced on radio.
00:25:22.000 --> 00:25:32.240
Uh Hava was still in Liberec because they were, uh he and Jan Triska and a number of other people were operating 24 hours a day on this pirate radio.
00:25:32.799 --> 00:25:39.759
And uh they went to City Hall to see Dubček give this announcement.
00:25:40.319 --> 00:25:57.440
And, you know, the spirit and the heart and the air just went right out of the room because there was no sense in resisting when Dubček himself, who had initiated the reforms of the Prague Spring, decided to roll them all back under Soviet pressure, of course.
00:25:57.839 --> 00:25:59.119
You mentioned Pirate Radio.
00:25:59.200 --> 00:26:13.440
There was a recent Czech film from a year or two ago called Waves, I think, that exactly is centered around that event in the set in Prague, how you know civilians kept the radio going against any sort of Russian or Soviet broadcasts.
00:26:13.599 --> 00:26:18.559
Um, there's also a film that I watched uh leading up to today from 2020, I think.
00:26:18.640 --> 00:26:27.119
It's um almost a biopic of Vaclav Havel by uh Slavak Horak, and it portrays that period as well.
00:26:27.279 --> 00:26:31.519
And and you know, you've got this very dashing, young, successful playwright.
00:26:31.599 --> 00:26:35.359
And there's a scene where Dubček is in the crowd in the audience.
00:26:35.599 --> 00:26:38.720
Um, he's up on stage, and there might be the theater that you've talked about.
00:26:38.799 --> 00:26:39.680
That's where this is said.
00:26:39.759 --> 00:26:41.039
I didn't have that context.
00:26:41.200 --> 00:26:55.839
And then he asks, like under pressure, he basically gets the audience to make him rise up and come up on stage, Dubczek to address the people and basically, you know, um push him beyond what he was comfortable saying.
00:26:56.160 --> 00:27:04.880
And that then leads to an argument later uh down uh in a in an alleyway between the two men, where Dubček has a go at him for like, why did you push me?
00:27:04.960 --> 00:27:08.640
You knew you knew I'm under pressure and I shouldn't have done that.
00:27:08.960 --> 00:27:10.720
So was there a connection between the two?
00:27:10.799 -->
00:27:11.920
Did they know each other?
00:27:12.079 --> 00:27:13.359
Was Haveless?
00:27:13.680 --> 00:27:20.960
Well, they met and talked at a number of different events, but but I I think knowing it, you know, they were not friends, they were not colleagues.
00:27:21.119 --> 00:27:24.799
Uh Dubček certainly knew who Havel was.
00:27:24.880 --> 00:27:31.440
He was a prominent voice pushing for democratic reform in 1967-68.
00:27:31.680 --> 00:27:35.519
He was an extremely uh controversial figure.
00:27:35.759 --> 00:27:45.759
Um by that time he was already being investigated by uh the secret police who were doing various things to pressure him.
00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:56.000
It wasn't until after the Soviet crackdown, however, that he became uh uh talked about as an enemy of the state and they began bugging his house and so on.
00:27:56.640 --> 00:28:05.039
One of the next things I noted um after 1968, he continues to write plays and um The Conspirators.
00:28:05.200 --> 00:28:06.880
Can you talk to us a little bit about that one?
00:28:07.119 --> 00:28:19.839
So you mentioned it um focuses heavily on human identity uh as haunted and fragile, and the notion that um we are betrayed by ideas imposed by others.
00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:25.039
Was this a reaction to that experience uh 68 and its aftermath?
00:28:25.359 --> 00:28:26.880
Yeah, absolutely.
00:28:27.039 --> 00:28:31.039
Um uh and it's a it's a strange, bizarre play.
00:28:31.119 --> 00:28:39.759
Uh it comes in this period where Havel has voluntarily uh stepped down from the theater of the Bowie Street.
00:28:39.839 --> 00:28:42.160
He wanted more time to write.
00:28:43.519 --> 00:28:54.240
But during that summer is when the Soviets invaded, and he very quickly become uh uh unofficially a banned writer.
00:28:54.480 --> 00:28:56.160
No one would publish him.
00:28:57.440 --> 00:29:04.079
His books were pulled from library shelves, and the whole crowd around him uh became enemies of the state.
00:29:04.319 --> 00:29:15.519
And so that play was written in that time period, and uh it's written over an enormously long period of time, which is maybe it's it's a bit of a convoluted play.
00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:21.839
Havel called it a uh like a uh a bread that had been kept in the oven too long.
00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:43.440
It was not one of his favorite plays, but it did capture this theme of of uh the way in which we can all betray ourselves and and in particular the way in which Dubchek betrayed himself, uh betrayed the country and betrayed his own i ideas and ideals.
00:29:45.119 --> 00:29:54.240
Because these two meet again, uh this is probably something that we will cover at the conclusion uh towards the end of um uh this podcast.
00:29:54.400 --> 00:29:58.480
But can you talk to us a little bit about um this next phase of his life?
00:29:58.720 --> 00:30:01.599
So the hope of the Prague Spring has been crushed.
00:30:01.680 --> 00:30:06.720
He's chosen to remain um in Czechoslovakia with
his family.
00:30:06.880 --> 00:30:10.559
Uh, can you tell us a little bit about until the late 70s what this was like for him?
00:30:10.640 --> 00:30:16.720
Because again, um probably one of his most famous publications came out towards the conclusion of that decade.
00:30:17.359 --> 00:30:21.279
The power of the powerless, which is a profound essay.
00:30:21.440 --> 00:30:35.599
And um so Havel retreats to uh uh retreats to uh this this farmhouse or mountain cottage in Trutnov because he can't take the atmosphere in Prague.
00:30:35.839 --> 00:30:54.480
Um uh he's an enemy of the state, and he has this experience that now when he's walking down the streets of Prague, he sees former friends who cross the street rather than be seen passing him or shaking his hand or anything like this.
00:30:54.640 --> 00:31:16.960
He's constantly followed by the secret police and um it's a very difficult time in his life uh because he's someone who craves intellectual stimulation in society while at the same time paradoxically being a very uh private and awkward person.
00:31:17.680 --> 00:31:56.000
And um uh he does a number of things in those years to ward off the loneliness and and one is to create what what he called writers' congresses, um where he hosts what were formerly the most important writers in the country who are no longer able to work and publish, and they come out to Rodachek and they spend, you know, uh of the week uh reading their new uh the the the short stories and novels and plays that are all writing that they're all still writing, but putting in the desk drawer.
00:31:56.319 --> 00:32:16.640
Havel makes these fabulous menus for the whole week that he sends out, you know, in three colors of every meal, and there's there's white tablecloths, and you know, it becomes a place to um have a little elegance and try to share the art that can no longer be shared with the public.
00:32:18.240 --> 00:32:29.039
By the mid-1970s, um he's getting enormously depressed, and um he gives up writing for a while.
00:32:29.200 --> 00:32:44.480
Um he says he needs money, but if you track his expenses, it doesn't quite make sense because he's making uh foreign royalties still from plays that are running in London and England and pay him far more than he can make in the Czech Republic.
00:32:44.720 --> 00:32:51.759
He goes to work in a brewery rolling beer barrels out of the basement and onto trucks.
00:32:52.079 --> 00:32:53.359
Sorry, that's in the movie.
00:32:53.440 --> 00:32:55.119
That's that's such a great anecdote.
00:32:55.200 --> 00:33:00.799
So he works in this brewery, mind-nombing work for someone who's you know one of the most famous intellectuals.
00:33:00.960 --> 00:33:06.240
And he he drives this gigantic Mercedes everywhere, and he seems to be really proud of it.
00:33:06.319 --> 00:33:12.480
And there's a scene when he rocks up at his new job at the brewery, and then his boss walks up, it's like, whose car is this?
00:33:12.640 --> 00:33:13.200
It was my car.
00:33:13.279 --> 00:33:20.799
Well, I'm your boss, I'm driving this little shoda which is almost about to fall apart, and here's the new laborer rocks up in this gigantic Mercedes.
00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:29.759
So I'm not sure if that was his sense of humor or if he just likes poking the bear, but what that said about his personality, but that Mercedes features a lot in that film.
00:33:31.119 --> 00:33:39.599
He was enormously proud of the Mercedes, and of course, that's one part of his background, the son of prominent entrepreneurs.
00:33:39.759 --> 00:33:43.359
That's a side of his personality he's also at war with.
00:33:43.440 --> 00:33:51.519
You know, he is the wife he marries, Olga, is a meat cutter's daughter and comes from the rough side of Prague.
00:33:51.759 --> 00:34:01.839
And he had this constant need to uh experience life down low, close to the working class people.
00:34:02.240 --> 00:34:06.240
That was the part of him that thought he was gonna get something.
00:34:06.480 --> 00:34:12.400
It was gonna make him into a kind of a different kind of man by doing some manual labor, right?
00:34:12.800 --> 00:34:20.079
But the other half at odds with this is the one who still wants to drive the Mercedes to the working class job.
00:34:20.320 --> 00:34:20.639
Yeah.
00:34:20.719 --> 00:34:24.880
And again, that would have been something unachievable for anyone in Czechoslovakia at the time.
00:34:24.960 --> 00:34:26.880
That it's not like a Mercedes today.
00:34:26.960 --> 00:34:32.559
Like back in those days, that car would have been, you know, 10 lives worth of work, maybe.
00:34:33.039 --> 00:34:33.360
Absolutely.
00:34:33.920 --> 00:34:35.119
Two or three houses for that.
00:34:35.280 --> 00:34:39.760
So he's depressed, he does this work, he's obviously struggling with himself.
00:34:39.920 --> 00:34:41.199
He doesn't emigrate, though.
00:34:41.360 --> 00:34:42.159
Can you explain that?
00:34:42.320 --> 00:34:43.360
Why did he stick around?
00:34:43.440 --> 00:34:44.159
I'm sure he would have.
00:34:44.719 --> 00:34:47.039
Well, I think that's uh that's a big mystery.
00:34:47.199 --> 00:34:49.599
He had three different opportunities.
00:34:49.840 --> 00:34:58.480
Um the uh the uh first one is in 1968 because he saw the writing on the wall right after the Soviet invasion.
00:34:58.719 --> 00:35:11.199
He knew he was going to be targeted, he'd been a prominent voice for democratic reform, and he reached out to the Ford Foundation that gave him a grant to go to the United States, and that was his first chance to go.
00:35:11.519 --> 00:35:18.320
And he struggles with it uh for weeks, and he keeps putting it off.
00:35:18.639 --> 00:35:22.000
You know, he writes letter after letter to the Ford Foundation.
00:35:22.559 --> 00:35:24.719
I can't come this month.
00:35:24.880 --> 00:35:31.360
We're still in the struggle, the country might still be in this this goes on for six months or so.
00:35:31.599 --> 00:35:44.480
And he
finally decides, he he writes to the Ford Foundation in a in a letter I found in their archives, he says, I'm one of the people who caused this crisis.
00:35:45.199 --> 00:35:55.840
I was the leader of the, or one of the leaders, him and Ludwig Vatzilik and a few others, of uh calling for democratic reforms that caused the Soviet invasion.
00:35:56.480 --> 00:36:07.599
Um because of my notoriety and fame, I could leave the country, but somehow it would be unethical to do so, to leave the situation I caused.
00:36:07.840 --> 00:36:13.039
And many of my friends have to stay home because they're not going to get the opportunities for the Ford Foundation.
00:36:13.199 --> 00:36:29.840
This comes up again in prison, where uh uh uh the secret police comes to him with an offer by the president of the country that he'll be allowed to leave prison if he will uh give up his passport and immediately emigrate to the United States.
00:36:30.079 --> 00:36:35.199
His publisher in Canada has found him a job at a as a visiting professor at a university.
00:36:35.440 --> 00:36:38.400
Once again, he declines to leave.
00:36:38.960 --> 00:36:42.079
And uh I think there are personal reasons.
00:36:42.239 --> 00:36:45.119
One is he was always embarrassed at his English.
00:36:45.280 --> 00:36:48.719
He wondered how he would survive abroad.
00:36:50.400 --> 00:36:54.159
And the other, you know, his I asked his brother this question.
00:36:54.320 --> 00:37:09.760
We were we were sitting in the old family house uh that Ivan Havel was living in, uh, and he said our point of view my brother's point of view and my point of view is it was the Soviets who should leave.
00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:12.159
It was the communists that should leave.
00:37:12.320 --> 00:37:13.599
We're not gonna leave.
00:37:13.760 --> 00:37:18.800
We're just uh what he called Czech country bumpkins.
00:37:19.760 --> 00:37:27.519
Of course they're they're nothing like country bumpkins, they're uh profound intellectuals, a writer and a scientist.
00:37:27.760 --> 00:37:33.119
But just that sense that they belong to the country, I think, was partly what it was about.
00:37:33.440 --> 00:37:38.239
They'd last at the Austrians, they'd last at the Nazis, and they're gonna sit out the communists as well.
00:37:38.320 --> 00:37:39.840
That sort of um attitude.
00:37:40.320 --> 00:37:42.239
It's a very Czech thing, by the way.
00:37:42.320 --> 00:37:46.559
I I don't know if that's you know, it's um very patient.
00:37:46.800 --> 00:37:47.679
Very patient.
00:37:48.079 --> 00:37:51.840
Everything you just described is the definition of integrity, isn't it?
00:37:52.000 --> 00:38:00.480
Like if if that is true, that and it was because I reckon the majority of people would have just taken the other option and be on a flight out of there.
00:38:00.559 --> 00:38:07.119
But he chose a life of misery because again, no one could have foreseen the end of communism in his lifetime.
00:38:07.360 --> 00:38:12.880
Like there
could have been a likelihood, look at North Korea and other places where he would still, you know, leave.
00:38:13.519 --> 00:38:40.559
I see great personal value in that, and by the way, I I contrast that with in what's going on in my country as uh, you know, I live in Santa Fe, which is a kind of artsy community, and uh I know at least three or four people who have chosen um to leave the country um to live abroad because they don't want to live in this country under what's going on in the Trump administration.
00:38:41.519 --> 00:38:45.440
It becomes infuriating to them.
00:38:46.000 --> 00:38:56.239
But I contrast that with Havel's decision to stay, even if it means another three years in prison in a totalitarian state.
00:38:57.280 --> 00:39:11.119
Um now to get back to the late 1970s, there's a there's a few other things, by the mid-70s, Havel's beginning to feel like he's got to start taking some action.
00:39:11.280 --> 00:39:16.559
He can't just retreat to his little uh mountain cottage.
00:39:17.199 --> 00:39:23.440
And uh so that's when he writes the letter to Alexander Dubczyk um that you referred to.
00:39:24.239 --> 00:39:44.159
Uh of course it's an open letter, so he sends it not only to Dubczyk, but uh to the foreign press and various places calling for the country to uh return to some principles and pointing out the moral corruption that's taking place in society.
00:39:44.320 --> 00:39:47.599
And of course that got him into enormous hot water.
00:39:49.679 --> 00:39:53.679
But he was too famous to just make him disappear, which is probably what he's talking about.
00:39:54.239 --> 00:39:55.920
Too famous to disappear.
00:39:56.400 --> 00:40:05.039
So he he was walking that in that gray zone on that that fine line where, like, you know, uh keep my head above water but not too much.
00:40:05.199 --> 00:40:07.280
So he was very smart when it came to that.
00:40:07.599 --> 00:40:08.800
Yes, that's right.
00:40:08.960 --> 00:40:15.679
And that's that's one of the functions of him being the spokes, one of the co-spokespersons of Charter 77.
00:40:16.000 --> 00:40:29.599
His co-spokesperson was uh a man of uh enormous moral weight, uh Jan Petutchka, who uh uh uh some people say is one of the two great philosophers in all of Czech history.
00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.800
And so he had spent most of his life being unemployable for his ideas.
00:40:35.199 --> 00:40:44.400
And he was an old man at that time, and uh both Havel and Patuchka were sort of were arrested as soon as Charter 77 was announced.
00:40:44.639 --> 00:40:58.400
Um Patochka was an old man and he died in a police interrogation that lasted all day, uh, died of a heart attack, which was enormously difficult for Havel because he really loved Jan Patuchka.
00:41:00.239 --> 00:41:06.320
Aaron Ross Powell Was there a specific catalyst for his longest stint in prison, Havel's from 78 to 83?
00:41:06.639 --> 00:41:21.280
Um I mean 78's the same year that his essay Power of the Powerless comes out, and his exploration of that corrosive living a lie um that you sort of have forced into under a communist regime.
00:41:21.519 --> 00:41:21.760
Yes.
00:41:22.159 --> 00:41:31.760
Um was this was this the catalyst for his imprisonment, or was it just one of those a point at which um the regime was like, okay, now it's time to isolate.
00:41:32.239 --> 00:41:34.239
Well he had been targeted for a long time.
00:41:34.320 --> 00:41:35.840
He'd been under house arrest.
00:41:36.000 --> 00:41:51.119
I honestly can't remember right now what exactly they charged him with uh uh in that long prison term, but it could have been any number of things, because he was up to all sorts of trouble.
00:41:51.360 --> 00:42:09.199
And The Power and the Powerless was uh uh uh a major, major essay where he describes the corruption that takes place in a uh totalitarian regime where everyone has to live by lies and half-truths.
00:42:09.519 --> 00:42:21.840
It's a very prescient essay, so that so that something happens, he says, that those in power are truly the powerless because they're just cogs in the machine.
00:42:22.079 --> 00:42:26.320
They actually have no freedom of thought or even freedom of movement.
00:42:26.639 --> 00:42:34.960
And so the only power lies in those who refuse the lie and live by their own conscience.
00:42:35.519 --> 00:42:46.159
But of course, that means you're gonna be a window washer for the rest of your life, or you're gonna work in a boiler room, or you're gonna be a political prisoner.
00:42:46.400 --> 00:42:49.119
And that's the only freedom that's available.
00:42:49.679 --> 00:42:51.519
And there's prison and there's prison, right?
00:42:51.679 --> 00:43:01.760
So there's the there's the Nelson Mandela kind of prison and there's the Adolf Hitler prison where he receives visitors and gets his favorite meals and uh nice view out the window and visitor passes.
00:43:01.920 --> 00:43:04.320
What was his imprisonment like, Havel?
00:43:04.559 --> 00:43:06.639
And how did it shape him in in his later years?
00:43:06.960 --> 00:43:09.840
Well, his prison somewhere in between those.
00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:13.840
Um, he's definitely treated with kid gloves.
00:43:14.079 --> 00:43:23.119
They don't want anything to happen to him, and they're terrified something might happen to him in prison because of his international fame by this time.
00:43:23.360 --> 00:43:30.159
Nevertheless, he finds prison a very dark place and he goes into one depression after another.
00:43:30.400 --> 00:43:37.599
Interestingly enough, if you look at his letters to his wife, the the first letters are all full of hope and optimism.
00:43:37.679 --> 00:43:42.239
You know, he says, uh finally I'm gonna have a chance to write.
00:43:42.320 --> 00:43:45.440
There's gonna be no more people visiting us at the cottage.
00:43:45.679 --> 00:43:55.760
I'll have all day long to write, and he has plans to take up yoga in his prison cell and do exercises, and
that lasts maybe a month.
00:43:56.480 --> 00:43:59.760
And after that, just this oppressive sense.
00:44:00.639 --> 00:44:04.719
Of the isolation starts taking hold of him.
00:44:05.840 --> 00:44:10.639
The letters, nevertheless, are quite beautiful and philosophical.
00:44:10.719 --> 00:44:15.599
Aaron Ross Powell He had Olga on his side the whole time, the daughter of a meat cutter.
00:44:15.760 --> 00:44:20.320
So not even a butcher, but uh probably a level-down laborer in a slaughterhouse.
00:44:20.559 --> 00:44:27.280
And David, when we when we talked about this, and I think it's in your book as well, I think women do play a key role in his life.
00:44:27.360 --> 00:44:46.239
Aaron Ross Powell As you said, he um he had a very artistic heart, I suppose, when it came to um and and in in the way that he operated and had a very uh I don't know, what you'd call it a bit of a libertine streak when it came to relationships outside of his primary one with his wife.
00:44:46.559 --> 00:44:54.960
I just suppose it doesn't um detract from the man and his work, but what kind of dimension, what can we learn from him in terms of this seemingly constant need to be.
00:44:55.519 --> 00:44:57.679
Are women are women as Achilles heel?
00:44:59.360 --> 00:45:00.000
Maybe.
00:45:00.159 --> 00:45:03.280
Um Olga certainly had to put up with a lot.
00:45:03.599 --> 00:45:06.880
Um at one point each of them had separate lovers.
00:45:07.440 --> 00:45:19.280
Um Havel's a bit of a playboy, um, and he goes out and carouses with some of his theater friends, and you know, they're up to no good in the pubs and picking up women.
00:45:19.519 --> 00:45:34.559
And um I think for me it was important to understand this also as a uh uh a piece of the times in which he was living.
00:45:35.119 --> 00:45:44.719
The uh underground dissident movement in the 1970s, where sex or was became one of the few freedoms left.
00:45:45.360 --> 00:45:51.760
And so there was a lot of playing around in both men and women in the dissident movement at that time.
00:45:52.079 --> 00:45:55.280
I see it as the one liberty left.
00:45:56.159 --> 00:46:03.840
Um, not that it didn't create a whole lot of chaos and um for himself and for Olga.
00:46:04.719 --> 00:46:06.800
But it wasn't used against him, you know.
00:46:06.880 --> 00:46:12.559
Um, like uh in other Secret Services, they have, you know, Romeo agents, etc.
00:46:12.880 --> 00:46:22.159
So um, because I assume he would have been surrounded by spies in his uh daily life, and I'm sure he was very well aware of it, and it usually causes some sort of paranoia.
00:46:22.320 --> 00:46:36.719
Those those desperate communist leaders usually use all sorts of methods and and usually infiltrating someone's very personal life by having to implant it there that it doesn't have his best interests at heart might have been an an option for them.
00:46:37.119 --> 00:46:38.400
Was there any evidence of that?
00:46:38.480 --> 00:46:47.679
That they were all
just there's no evidence of of anything like that, and I think that's because uh the dissonance circles he traveled in were so tight.
00:46:47.840 --> 00:46:49.840
They knew who could be trusted and who couldn't.
00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:53.760
Now, Havel had an interesting philosophy about what to do.
00:46:53.920 --> 00:46:57.840
He was constantly finding bugs in his house, listening devices.
00:46:58.559 --> 00:47:04.639
It created enormous uh chaos and confusion and paranoia among a number of his friends.
00:47:04.800 --> 00:47:16.400
They would uh, you know, only talk when they were outside, or only talk in the bathroom with water running about anything of anything of any importance.
00:47:16.639 --> 00:47:19.039
Havel's idea was different.
00:47:19.760 --> 00:47:26.880
He said, and and he wrote about this a number of times in letters that uh I'm not gonna hide what I think.
00:47:27.599 --> 00:47:35.760
I'm going to be fully explicit in all my plots against the government, what I think's going on in the country.
00:47:36.000 --> 00:47:52.880
And so he refused to play the game of trying to hide his political thoughts and ideas, except on a few occasions, such as when he was writing The Power, the Powerless, he did keep the manuscript hidden in the woods.
00:47:53.840 --> 00:47:57.440
And then there was a Western agent who came and picked it up?
00:47:57.679 --> 00:47:58.400
What happened there?
00:47:58.800 --> 00:48:13.599
So he had a friend take the manuscript and walk it uh up to the top of the giant mountains where he met someone from Poland who picked up the manuscript and had it published in Poland first.
00:48:14.559 --> 00:48:17.760
Because they were under martial law most of the 80s as well in Poland.
00:48:18.559 --> 00:48:31.440
Yeah, I there was a collection, I guess it was a Samy's dot collection that was coming up out of different essays of how to live in a totalitarian state, and it was being put together by a Polish editor.
00:48:31.920 --> 00:48:33.199
It's just a forgotten art, isn't it?
00:48:33.360 --> 00:48:35.440
Smuggling documents out to be published these days.
00:48:35.599 --> 00:48:40.079
It's just yeah, Scott Age has changed things completely.
00:48:40.480 --> 00:48:52.320
Um so Havel emerges from prison in 1983, and then he's It's a big decade uh for the communist um countries in the Eastern Bloc.
00:48:52.639 --> 00:49:09.920
He uh is instrumental in um the civic forum as well and sort of the real groundswell of um significant opposition to not just the specific uh the Czech regime, but just the idea of totalitarianism itself.
00:49:10.079 --> 00:49:14.159
Can you t tell us a little bit about um his activities in the 1980s?
00:49:14.719 --> 00:49:22.639
He had moved back to Prague in in the uh the mid-80s and uh spent a lot of time in Prague and referred to him as a shadow government.
00:49:22.800 --> 00:49:33.039
He was the most by far the most uh famous dissident, um, not only famous for being a dissident, but as a great playwright and someone who was published abroad.
00:49:33.280 --> 00:49:39.360
And uh he would get dozens of letters, you know, a day from people wanting help.
00:49:39.679 --> 00:49:43.440
He hired uh secretaries to help him manage this.
00:49:43.760 --> 00:49:57.360
Whenever uh foreign correspondents uh were allowed into Czechoslovakia, you know, uh one of the first visits they would take would be to uh Havel's apartment.
00:49:57.519 --> 00:50:03.760
It'd be the first visit that the American ambassador would take when they got their posting in Czechoslovakia.
00:50:04.079 --> 00:50:06.000
So that was his status.
00:50:07.360 --> 00:50:16.239
And yet at the same time, in uh 1988, he uh went to prison for his third and final time.
00:50:16.400 --> 00:50:26.480
That was a shorter prison sentence of less than a year, and he was let out under condition that he would have no political activities.
00:50:26.960 --> 00:50:39.199
It tried not to aggravate the regime, he missed a number of the uh uh uh of the demonstrations in 1988 and early 1989.
00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:52.719
He was actually on vacation at his uh his cottage up in the Giant Mountains uh on November 11, 1989, when the dam finally broke.
00:50:52.960 --> 00:51:13.119
And that was a fairly small student protest, a few thousand students who um, as they were walking towards uh Winston's Law Square had been trapped by the police and attacked with Billy Clubs, and dozens of them, uh maybe it was hundreds, ended up in the hospital.
00:51:13.599 --> 00:51:18.880
And uh Havel gets a call, Ustostalo, it's finally here.
00:51:19.760 --> 00:51:22.000
There's a national outrage.
00:51:22.239 --> 00:51:29.039
He immediately drives to Prague and a meeting with the student, uh, the leaders of the student demonstrations.
00:51:29.280 --> 00:51:33.599
They just try decide to call a national strike for Monday morning.
00:51:35.039 --> 00:51:54.719
They begin organizing this coalition of students, actors, playwrights, and artists, and they're offered the basement of uh the Magic Lantern, which is an amazing theater complex uh next to the state theater.
00:51:54.880 --> 00:51:58.239
They're meeting daily, they call a national strike.
00:51:58.320 --> 00:52:06.880
In the first week there's a demonstration which several hundred thousand people show up, and these demonstrations now are just electrifying.
00:52:07.679 --> 00:52:14.960
People can feel that that the the any support for the regime has just completely dissipated.
00:52:15.119 --> 00:52:27.199
And in one of these earlier demonstrations, the crowd starts chanting Havel Nahrat, Havel to the castle, meaning the seat of government.
00:52:27.440 --> 00:52:34.480
Some of the student demonstrators pull out their keys and they start shaking their keys.
00:52:34.800 --> 00:52:36.159
Havel Nachrat.
00:52:37.119 --> 00:52:40.800
Havel Nachrat Havel Nachrat.
00:52:41.599 --> 00:52:44.559
Havel to the castle, to the Presidential Palace.
00:52:44.880
--> 00:52:54.960
And it turns out when 250,000 people do that, it makes an enormous amount of noise and creates an enormous amount of energy.
00:52:55.199 --> 00:52:59.599
And the keys, I think, suggest the keys to the castle.
00:52:59.840 --> 00:53:01.119
We demand them.
00:53:02.320 --> 00:53:22.000
And uh between November 11th and uh the end of the year, January 31st, the communist government collapses and they offer uh Vaclav Havel the presidency in an interim government so that elections can be held.
00:53:22.239 --> 00:53:33.599
And they pull Alexander Dubček, who had been the Communist Party Secretary in the reform of the Prague Spring, and make him prime minister.
00:53:34.159 --> 00:53:39.360
Something between democracy and socialism with a human face.
00:53:40.159 --> 00:53:42.480
And it's just a remarkable time.
00:53:44.159 --> 00:53:47.519
Which was the the goal in 68, right?
00:53:48.000 --> 00:53:49.920
Socialism with a with a human face.
00:53:50.159 --> 00:53:57.519
I've read it once about that period, those 20 years, a whole generation between 68 and 88 or 89.
00:53:58.159 --> 00:54:04.400
I think that's a specific Czech word for it that I've forgotten, but it's like the the lost decades or something like that.
00:54:04.639 --> 00:54:09.840
And no one actually spoke about what happened because none of the other communist countries had this moment.
00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:30.480
Like, you know, yes, there would it was Hungary, you know, or there was East Germany 53, Hungary in 56, but they didn't have that prolonged period of like six months of fresh air and and freedom and all those ideas, and that was just shut down with violence, and then no one dared talk about it, except for a few people like Havel over the decades, and he paid for it um, you know, by doing time in prison.
00:54:30.719 --> 00:54:35.920
Um how is that period in Czech history understood these days?
00:54:37.440 --> 00:54:41.360
I can just speak how they never speak of it hardly.
00:54:41.599 --> 00:54:45.039
It's a time of immense difficulty and suffering.
00:54:45.920 --> 00:54:53.679
Um it's a time of having to shut up, knowing there are certain things you can't talk about.
00:54:54.960 --> 00:55:04.719
The only escape for those sorts of thoughts are the famous Czech black humor where you can let a little bit of the resentment creep out, you know.
00:55:05.039 --> 00:55:11.119
A whole lost generation and a in a true tragedy.
00:55:11.440 --> 00:55:30.239
And one of the things that's unique about Czechoslovakia is they were a liberal democracy from the end of World War One to the beginning of World War II, and so they have this democratic tradition that's very, very vibrant.
00:55:32.000 --> 00:55:39.840
And then it's snuffed out by the coup in 1948, and it tries to revive in 1968.
00:55:40.480 --> 00:55:50.320
But there's a whole 40-year period that people had to live under that was just just personally devastating for many, many people.
00:55:51.119 --> 00:55:54.960
That sense of shame as well, which which usually leads to people not talking about it?
00:55:55.119 --> 00:56:02.719
Like, why didn't we get our keys out in 68 and we could have saved us those decades of oppression?
00:56:03.280 --> 00:56:06.719
I have always suspected that that's there.
00:56:07.519 --> 00:56:19.519
Uh and to be honest, I have I have a lot of Czech friends, and uh the uh that's a subject for whatever reason that never comes up.
00:56:19.599 --> 00:56:22.480
I'm probably a little too gentle with them in that regard.
00:56:24.480 --> 00:56:35.440
Uh you're right at the uh not the conclusion, but after um Havel assumes the presidency, that he had this deep desire to revive civil society in Czechoslovakia.
00:56:35.599 --> 00:56:44.239
And you mentioned that um because of his idea that the love, friendship, compassion, humility, and forgiveness had in a sense lost their meaning.
00:56:45.599 --> 00:56:52.639
Like you said, on in uh with those twenty years, it it it it did something to the body politic in that country.
00:56:53.119 --> 00:56:56.000
He's a humanist at heart, obviously, through his writing.
00:56:56.239 --> 00:56:57.679
How did he go about doing this?
00:56:57.760 --> 00:57:00.239
And and do you feel like he was successful?
00:57:01.440 --> 00:57:04.239
Well, I think maybe partially successful.
00:57:04.480 --> 00:57:10.400
Um he he certainly is a humanist, uh, his father was before him.
00:57:10.800 --> 00:57:20.320
Um and he really believes that democracy grows out of certain humanistic values.
00:57:21.599 --> 00:57:24.960
Uh and values like love and forgiveness.
00:57:25.119 --> 00:57:28.719
And there's no question that that was part of his project.
00:57:29.039 --> 00:57:32.480
How do you rebuild society from the ground up?
00:57:32.800 --> 00:57:35.760
And it was part of his project before 1989.
00:57:36.079 --> 00:57:41.119
Now uh to what extent he succeeded, uh I'm I'm not quite sure.
00:57:41.199 --> 00:57:45.840
I think it's a it's a real mixed mixed record.
00:57:46.480 --> 00:57:50.639
Um but that's a beautiful time in his in his own life.
00:57:50.880 --> 00:58:11.599
Um you know, one of the things I noticed very early on, if you look at his letters, there's a there's a period right about 1989 where he starts signing his letters and his he's got this big bold signature and he starts drawing red and green hearts after his name.
00:58:13.039 --> 00:58:16.320
As if something in him is starting to flower.
00:58:17.440 --> 00:58:20.159
And he's a very shy, taciturn man.
00:58:20.239 --> 00:58:26.880
I think that was a big deal for him to draw a heart after his name.
00:58:27.199 --> 00:58:28.960
Long before emojis, by the way.
00:58:29.199 --> 00:58:29.599
That's right.
00:58:29.920 --> 00:58:36.400
He was the last president of Czechoslovakia, and we're talking about the Velvet Revolution.
00:58:36.480 --> 00:58:37.840
We haven't talked about the term.
00:58:38.159 --> 00:58:48.239
Velvet
Revolution obviously insinuates that it was velvet, it was soft, unlike what happened in in parts of you know the Soviet Union on the Balkans and what happened in Romania.
00:58:48.639 --> 00:58:52.159
Um, why was there no violence?
00:58:52.400 --> 00:58:56.559
And what can other people learn from that that still live in oppressive regimes these days?
00:58:56.719 --> 00:59:06.320
How can you topple a regime, not Gandhi style, but Havel style, and and have that beautiful outcome that obviously the majority of people were seeking?
00:59:06.719 --> 00:59:08.159
What a great question.
00:59:08.239 --> 00:59:12.800
That the term velvet revolution, by the way, was coined by Havel himself.
00:59:13.039 --> 00:59:16.480
And in the bowels of the magic lantern theater.
00:59:16.639 --> 00:59:18.960
There's a little conference room in the basement.
00:59:19.039 --> 00:59:24.000
They're talking, you know, and Havel was just a genius at coining these terms.
00:59:24.159 --> 00:59:25.760
Um that's fascinating.
00:59:25.840 --> 00:59:34.159
And then um, so he was the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president in the in the 90s of the new Czech Republic.
00:59:34.400 --> 00:59:46.000
Now, how did that go down with him that because David, you would confirm that most Australians still call it Czechoslovakia until this day, they haven't really realized that it's not an a country anymore.
00:59:46.239 --> 00:59:49.199
But how did that go down uh with him?
00:59:49.599 --> 00:59:55.679
Was that a sense of failure that he couldn't hold a country together, or uh was it meant to be?
00:59:56.480 --> 00:59:59.119
A sense of very deep personal failure.
00:59:59.280 --> 01:00:22.960
Um he resigned from the presidency of of uh of Czechoslovakia rather than um agree to the terms of a divorce between Slovakia and and the Czech Republic, what became the Czech Republic, and um he really felt that uh it was uh it was a wrong move.
01:00:23.360 --> 01:00:34.559
And uh after the divorce there were new elections in the Czech Republic, and he's he's elected as president of the new nation for two terms.
01:00:35.280 --> 01:00:52.400
Um now it's never quite the same for him because uh in the Czech Republic when the new constitution is written, his political enemies depotentiate the presidency.
01:00:52.559 --> 01:01:01.360
So the president becomes a a person with with much less power to to make things happen and becomes more of a figurehead.
01:01:01.679 --> 01:01:05.519
He serves two terms, a somewhat mixed record.
01:01:05.679 --> 01:01:18.159
The last term he's older, he's ill, uh he has surgery for lung cancer, and he's really not the effective person he once was.
01:01:18.880 --> 01:01:20.239
Heavy smoker, he used to be.
01:01:20.320 --> 01:01:22.079
I think that's throughout all the records.
01:01:22.239 --> 01:01:22.480
Yes.
01:01:22.800 --> 01:01:27.360
And he he paid for it uh with his health, and obviously the time in prison also.
01:01:27.920 --> 01:01:31.679
Let me add one story there, because I saw him shortly after.
01:01:32.000 --> 01:01:35.199
Oh yeah, uh that was please tell tell us about your personal connections, Sam.
01:01:35.920 --> 01:01:43.679
Well, it it's not a lot because he uh, you know, I had wanted to have a very long series of interviews which which uh was denied.
01:01:43.920 --> 01:01:50.480
He wrote back that uh everything he wanted to say was already in his plays and his letters and all of that.
01:01:50.719 --> 01:01:59.039
Um but I was invited by his brother to his annual garden party, which is held on Olga's birthday.
01:01:59.679 --> 01:02:06.719
And this was uh since dissident times in the at least 80s, maybe late 70s.
01:02:06.960 --> 01:02:17.519
Once a year they would gather uh the band rock and roll bands would play in the barn of his neighbor's house, Andre Krub.
01:02:18.159 --> 01:02:23.679
And there would be heavy, you know, all day beer drinking because it's checks.
01:02:24.239 --> 01:02:26.480
And people would stage plays.
01:02:27.039 --> 01:02:37.519
This particular one I went to, uh, they staged an amateur troupe staged in his backyard one of his one act plays, which was really just fabulous.
01:02:37.920 --> 01:02:42.159
About halfway through the day, he'd been in the farmhouse, about halfway through the day.
01:02:42.320 --> 01:03:02.719
You know, he's he's emaciated, he's he's had lung cancer, he's had a lung cut out, he's still smoking, he's still smoking there at the party, and he comes out with this enormous jug of Slivovice, plum brandy, which tastes like gasoline if you ever try it.
01:03:02.960 --> 01:03:08.079
And he comes out and he's there with all the old dissida friends.
01:03:08.400 --> 01:03:13.760
And uh, you know, this this is uh maybe 15 years ago.
01:03:14.559 --> 01:03:26.400
Uh maybe 17 years ago, and he's he's got this jug he can barely carry, and he's lifting it up and pouring everyone their shot of plum brandy.
01:03:26.639 --> 01:03:27.119
That's great.
01:03:27.360 --> 01:03:34.079
I get homesick, but um I'm also glad you actually got to meet him then and got to meet his brother um Ivan.
01:03:34.559 --> 01:03:35.039
Yes.
01:03:35.280 --> 01:03:40.320
Now you touched on this before, a final question we we had for you as well.
01:03:40.800 --> 01:03:43.119
There it is, your book for everyone to see.
01:03:43.199 --> 01:03:44.880
Again, it's on our website.
01:03:45.360 --> 01:03:47.199
Unfinished revolution.
01:03:48.159 --> 01:03:49.840
Why did you choose that title?
01:03:50.239 --> 01:03:59.199
Yes, uh, this comes from a uh uh an interview he did with a close friend of his who was a Polish journalist.
01:03:59.440 --> 01:04:11.039
In this very late interview, this was during his presidency, Havel says the only revolutions that are worthwhile are unfinished revolutions.
01:04:11.599 --> 01:04:21.920
He was a great admirer of the American model for whatever reason, because certainly the American model has all its faults.
01:04:22.320 --> 01:04:31.119
But he regarded the American model as an unfinished revolution, meaning a revolution always still in progress.
01:04:32.000 --> 01:04:45.679
It has no final answer generation after generation, has to extend the movement toward civil liberty to civil society, toward courtesy and generosity to others.
01:04:45.920 --> 01:05:00.719
The alternative to that was a sort of dogmatic revolution that thought it had the answers, like the Marxist-Leninist model that believes it knows exactly how the world works, and it's it's finished.
01:05:00.800 --> 01:05:02.480
We don't have to think about it anymore.
01:05:02.559 --> 01:05:03.840
It becomes dogma.
01:05:04.639 --> 01:05:08.079
And if anything, Havel is against dogma.
01:05:08.639 --> 01:05:10.079
What a champion of a human being.
01:05:10.239 --> 01:05:13.119
And we talked about this as well before the podcast.
01:05:13.280 --> 01:05:15.840
Why did he never get a Nobel Prize?
01:05:17.199 --> 01:05:18.000
That I don't know.
01:05:18.159 --> 01:05:20.000
He was nominated a few times.
01:05:21.440 --> 01:05:25.679
Obama got one, um, but he didn't lead the Velvet Revolution.
01:05:25.840 --> 01:05:29.199
I want to thank you so much for your time, my co-host uh David Shields.
01:05:29.280 --> 01:05:30.800
Dave, how was today for you?
01:05:31.599 --> 01:05:32.880
Like, really enjoyed it.
01:05:33.119 --> 01:05:34.079
Very enlightening.
01:05:34.159 --> 01:05:37.119
Um, also highly recommend the book, very engaging.
01:05:37.199 --> 01:05:45.039
So again, thank you, David, um, for your labor of love and um here this biography of uh yeah, an incredible man.
01:05:45.360 --> 01:05:52.159
Yeah, and you can go back to your father now, uh Dave, and and tell him and bring back some memories as well from his time in Czech in '68.
01:05:52.400 --> 01:05:57.119
And well, I'm glad that girlfriend didn't work out because otherwise you'd be a different David now.
01:05:57.440 --> 01:05:57.920
I would be.
01:05:58.079 --> 01:05:59.360
But I will lend him this book.
01:05:59.440 --> 01:06:01.280
I think he'll he'll get a lot out of it.
01:06:01.519 --> 01:06:01.840
Yeah.
01:06:02.000 --> 01:06:04.320
And um David, last words from you.
01:06:04.400 --> 01:06:08.159
Thank you so much for for sharing your stories, your passion.
01:06:08.400 --> 01:06:10.960
What is your connection to the country these days?
01:06:11.280 --> 01:06:20.800
Well, uh, one week from Saturday, I'll be flying with my wife to her mother's 80th birthday, and we'll spend two glorious weeks in in Prague and Zleene.
01:06:21.119 --> 01:06:25.519
And for everyone else, again, putschcast.com is where you find more on our podcast.
01:06:25.679 --> 01:06:29.519
And uh you can send us an email, putcast at gmail.com.
01:06:29.679 --> 01:06:31.599
And again, please um order that book.
01:06:31.679 --> 01:06:32.719
It's really worth the read.
01:06:32.800 --> 01:06:37.840
And I think we meet again, hopefully one day, David, to dive deeper into the Prague Spring.
01:06:37.920 --> 01:06:40.400
And we haven't really had time to talk on 48 either.
01:06:40.480 --> 01:06:42.880
It's just too much check history there for one hour.
01:06:43.199 --> 01:06:47.760
Well, um, it was a great joy for me to meet and talk to the two of you.
01:06:47.920 --> 01:07:05.599
And um, congratulations on the podcast and uh for the chutzpah to get it going and uh to uh carry on the kinds of conversations that I think Matsonhava would be very proud of, and um it would be a joy for me to return sometime.