Vaclav Havel: In Pace Resquiat

In 1983, the Nobel Peace Prize went to Polish union organizer Lech Walesa, who dared the wrath of the Soviet Union (read "Russian Communist International State" or, as President Reagan succinctly put it, "Evil Empire"). Although Winston Churchill famously and correctly warned an "Iron Curtain" had cordoned off Eastern Europe from the Democratic West, each generation produced its Lech Walesas who espoused the cause of freedom.

Czechoslovakia briefly enjoyed a Prague Spring in 1968, an experiment in "socialism with a human face" that Soviet Russia crushed. Young author Vaclav Havel, who became known to two generations as "dissident playwright Vaclav Havel," endured ostracism and even prison as he continued to utter the one word totalitarians cannot abide: NO.

By 1989 as George Kennan had predicted, the Soviet Empire was crumbling, having spent its way into oblivion. When Poland and Czechoslovakia broke away, Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel were elected to leadership positions. As Presidents of Poland and Czechoslovakia, Walesa and Havel saw freedom restored to millions of oppressed peoples.

Time passed both Walesa and Havel by, with each being replaced by democratically elected rivals. Havel helped ensure a peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia into two republics, one Czech and one Slovak, that retain cordial relations today. Compare this event with the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Now Vaclav Havel has died at age 75. In a testimony to the state Havel helped build, his fierce rival and successor Vaclav Klaus was among the first mourners to acknowledge Havel's legacy.

Writers, like political leaders, are survived by their legacies. The rare writer-political leader like Havel, then, leaves (at least) a double legacy. "The Power of the Powerless," Havel's magnificent 1978 essay, joins his plays and other writings as an enduring testament to a man who, to the end, understood and voiced the link between "dissidence" and freedom. In pace resquiat.