Abstract
Abstract
Václav Havel: Democracy with a Human Face
The public outcries of emotion surrounding Václav Havel's
December 18, 2011,
death underscored an unprecedented level of admiration and
appreciation for
Czechoslovakia's, and later the Czech Republic's, first
post-Communist president.
The international reaction to Havel's death came as a great
surprise, given the
numerous reviews of Havel as a political failure. Despite Havel's
international
celebrity as a dissident playwright, and recognition as a key
figure in the Velvet
Revolution that toppled the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1989,
his continued
dedication to principles of honesty, forgiveness, morality, and
personal
responsibility were viewed as politically naïve. On the basis
of waning popularity
ratings, inability to control Parliament, and the 1993 dissolution
of Czechoslovakia,
Havel's thirteen-year presidency has been labeled a domestic
failure. Nevertheless,
many of these reviews quantify Havel's legacy on the basis of
solely political factors,
and entirely disregard, or prematurely gauge, Havel's ultimate
impact on Czech
society.
This paper will examine the continuities in Havel's political
thought from his time as
a dissident playwright to his thirteen years as President. Havel's
unabated
dedication to his principles did result in waning popularity
ratings, but his repeated
insistences on the importance of infusing morality into all areas
of public life proved
instrumental in shaping the Czech Republic into the civil society
it is today.
Surrounded by post-communist democracies that have evolved into
one-party
states, the Czech Republic exhibits a remarkable level of civic
involvement that
precludes this possibility. This is Havel's true legacy, and, in
the months following
his death, it is finally being appreciated.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
1.
Introduction………………………………………………………………………...................1
2. The Consequences of an Inescapable
Paradox……………………………….…..
8
3. Havel ná
Hrad…………………………………………………………………....................23
4. A Vision for the
Future…………………………………………………………...............33
5. Czechs and
Švjek…………………………………………………………….................................….....54
6. A Belated
Appreciation…………………………………………………………...............70
7.
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………....................75
About this Honors Thesis
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