Open Letters: Selected Prose

It is difficult not to be profoundly stirred (but not shaken) by this collection of essays, letters and speeches, written by Vaclav Havel under the evil cloud of Communism. They begin in June 1965, and end, triumphantly, with President Havel's 1990 New Year's Day Address.

A constant theme of these pieces is the corrupt morality of the Communist regime. And at the beginning of his inaugural public address, the new President, half-jokingly, stated: "I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you."

As we all know now, lies were wedded to the heart of the Communist system, and for Havel and his fellow activists, only the truth could set it free. Consequently, Havel makes a compelling case for the primacy of the truth - to be true to ourselves so that we may be true to others as well.

"Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues", says the narrator of 'The Great Gatsby'. "And this is mine: I'm one of the few honest people that I have ever known." Havel is shockingly honest. He not only recounts the verbal intimidation of the state police, the sabotaging of his home, and the slashing of his car tyres, but also how he tried to kick down the door of a wine bar - and waved with the crowd to President Gorbachev outside a Prague theatre.

Vaclav Havel was a founding member and spokesman of the human rights movement Charter 77, and he was uncomfortable with the label of a 'dissident' because he always maintained that he was a playwright and not a politician. But by speaking up for those who were unable to speak for themselves, by asking the kind of questions that few others dared to ask, and above all by refusing to compromise his fidelity to the truth, Havel soon became the conscience of the nation.

It was ultimately this moral vacuum that precipitated the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989. Havel correctly anticipated its fall, but not its timing, and as late as 1987 he wrote: "It is hardly likely that in the foreseeable future a Communist state will utterly abandon Totalitarianism." (page 361)

Statements like these add immeasurably to the bravery, fortitude, dignity and tenacity of the dissidents, for it was by no means probable that they themselves would ever enjoy the freedom they worked so hard to achieve. Moreover, in the mid-1980s, following his release from prison, Havel's writings lose some of their humour and joy, as if, like Gatsby, he had an inkling that his dream was ultimately destined to elude his grasp.

Nevertheless, this does not lead Havel to clutch at false straws: he sees through the appeal of the various European Peace Movements of the early 1980s - views which were entirely vindicated by subsequent historical events. And he could have emigrated to the West. What's more, by holding fast to his conviction that the cancer of Communism was to be found in the step-by-step-by-step way in which it blighted everyday life, Havel was to be proved correct in his belief that one day ordinary, normal, everyday people living under an unjust and transparent tyranny would simply get fed up with being fed lies.

Finally, just because Communism in Europe no longer exists doesn't mean that Havel's writings have lost their relevance: 'Open Letters' will continue to speak words of comfort to any individual in any society who is denied justice. For one day, the truth will surely prevail, although perhaps not so joyfully, gently and peacefully as the Velvet Revolution of December 1989.

Open Letters: Selected Prose

Vaclav Havel

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