1 Cited in Vaclav Havel: A Czech Drama, a BBC documentary programme in the Bookmark series (London, 1987).
2 The postcard, dated 11 October 1936 and signed by Alice Moraweková and others, is reproduced in Václav Havel 97 (Prague, 1998), p. 7.
3 Václav Havel, Letters to Olga. June 1979-September 1982 (New York, 1988), p. 180.
4 The guide, written by an Honorary Foreign Member of the Masaryk Academy of Work, Gerald Druce, is entitled In the Heart of Europe. Life in Czechoslovakia (London, 1936).
5 In the Heart of Europe, op. cit., p. 166.
6 In the Heart of Europe, op. cit., pp. 222–223.
7 M. de Vattel, Le droit des gens, ou principes de la loi naturelle (Leiden, 1758), p. 6.
8 See ‘The Hossbach Memorandum’, in Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–45 (London, 1949), series D, i, pp. 29–30.
9 Keith Feiling, A Life of Neville Chamberlain (London, 1946), p. 367.
10 See Igor Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Stalin and Hitler. The Diplomacy of Edvard Beneš in the 1930s (New York and Oxford, 1996), especially chapters 5–7; and Boris Celovsky, Das Münchener Abkommen 1938 (Stuttgart, 1958).
11 Nevile Henderson, Failure of a Mission, Berlin 1937-1939 (New York, 1940), p. 163.
12 Compare the classic account of the earlier breakdown of the Weimar Republic — the ways in which it passed sequentially through the phases of loss of power, power vacuum, and the takeover of power — presented by Karl Dietrich Bracher, ‘Auflösung einer Demokratie: Das Ende der Weimar Republik als Forschungsproblem’, in Faktoren der Machtbildung, ed., Arkadij Gurland (Berlin, 1952), pp. 39–98.
13 Cited in Vojtech Mastny, The Czechs Under Nazi Rule. The Failure of National Resistance, 1939-1942 (New York, 1971), p. 23 (translation altered). See also F. Lukeš, ‘K volbě Emila Háchy presidentem tzv. druhé republiky’, Časopis Národního musea, Social Science series, CXXXI (1962), pp. 114–120; and Hácha to Beneš, 10 December 1938, in Edvard Beneš, Memoirs of Edvard Beneš: From Munich to New Year and New Victory (London, 1954), p. 97.
14 See ‘Před nástupem mladých’ (a speech in March 1933) and ‘Barrandovská skupina’ (minutes of a discussion group convened at Havlov, 24-28 May 1933) in V. M. Havel, Mé vzpomínky (Prague, 1995), pp. 229–247 and 247-260.
15 Mé vzpomínky, op. cit., p. 16.
16 Ibid.
17 Mé vzpomínky, op. cit. especially parts 1,3.
18 From an interview with Václav Havel in the television programme, ‘Pracovat a nezatrpknout’, directed by Dita Fuchsová, Česká televize (21 February 1999).
19 Václav Havel in ‘Pracovat a nezatrpknout’, op. cit.
20 All quotations in the following passages are taken from Václav M. Havel, ‘Barrandovská skupina’, in Mé vzpomínky, op. cit., pp. 247—260.
21 Wilhelm Keitel, The Memoirs of Field-Marshall Keitel (New York, 1966), p. 79.
22 Karl Megerle, ‘Deutschland und das Ende der Tschecho-Slowakei’, Monatshefte für auswärtige Politik, VI (1939), p. 770.
23 Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918-45, Series D, volume 4 (Washington, 1949-1958), p. 270.
24 Vít Vinas, Jan Nepomucký, česká legenda (Prague, 1993), p. 69; and the fine study by Robert Pynsent, Questions of Identity. Czech and Slovak Ideas of Nationality and Personality (Budapest, London and New York, 1994), pp. 190–196.
25 The following draws upon Vojtech Mastny, The Czechs under Nazi Rule, op. cit., Detlef Brandes, Die Tschechen unter deutschem Protektorat, volume 1: 1939-1942 (Munich, 1969); Sheila Grant Duff, A German Protectorate: the Czechs under Nazi Rule (London, 1942); Callum MacDonald and Jan Kaplan, Prague in the Shadow of the Swastika: A History of the German Occupation 1939-1945 (Prague, 1995).
26 William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act 1, Scene 3.
27 Jean Améry, Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne (Stuttgart, 1977), p. 67. Compare also the insightful work by Wolfgang Sofsky, Die Ordnung des Terrors Das Konzentrationslager (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), especially part 1.
28 See Günther Deschner, Heydrich: the pursuit of total power (London, 1981); and S. Aronson, Reinhard Heydrich und die Frühgeschichte von Gestapo und SD (Stuttgart, 1971).
29 The description is provided by the Nazi jurist and SS member, R. Höhn, in an obituary printed in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (13 June 1942) and quoted in Ernst Kohn-Bramstedt, Dictatorship and Political Police. The technique of control by fear (London, 1945), p. 160.
30 Gerhard Ritter ed., Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier, 1941/1942 (Bonn, 1951), p. 91; second edition (Stuttgart, 1963), p. 363.
31 Ibid., pp. 85, 91,176-177,288; second edition, pp. 349, 359, 363, 434-435. Heydrich’s hardline speech of 2 October 1941 is reproduced in Václav Král, Die Vergangenheit warnt. Dokumente über die Germanisierungs und Austilgungspolitik der Naziokkupanten in der Tschechoslowakei (Prague, 1960), pp. 121–132.
32 Ladislav Fuks, The Cremator (London, 1984).
33 Emanuel Moravec published several booklets, including Tatsachen und Irrtümer. Der Weg ins neue Europa (Prague, 1942). He committed suicide on 5 May 1945.
34 See Albin Eissner, ‘Die tschechoslowakische Bevölkerung im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, Aussenpolitik, 13 (1962), pp. 328–334; Waller Wynne, Jr., The Population of Czechoslovakia (Washington, 1953), p. 44, table 3; and Helena Krejčová and Jana Svobodová (eds.), Postavení a osudy židouského obyvatelstvačechách a na Moravé v letech 1939-1945 (Prague, 1998), p. 7.
35 These points are based respectively on Mé vzpomínky, op. cit., and an interview with Jiřina Šiklová in Prague, 19 September 1996.
36 From a letter to his parents written during the Christmas period 1917, cited in Mé vzpomínky, op. cit., p. 54.
37 Interview with František Novák, one of his oldest surviving friends, London (7 February 1997).
38 Mé vzpomínky, op. cit., p. 53.
39 Mé vzpomínky, op. cit., p. 64.
40 Leni Riefenstahl, The Sieve of Time. The Memoirs of Leni Riefenstahl (London, 1992), p. 297.
41 Cited in Prague in the Shadow of the Swastika, op. cit., p. 154. The article appeared in Filmový kurýr (24 March 1939).
42 Quoted from the letter of Miloš Havel to the Minister of Information Václav Kopecký, 9 July 1945, reprinted in Mé vypomínky, op. cit., pp. 93–94.
43 Mé vzpomínky, op. cit., p. 92.
44 See the account of his attempt to rebuff the false information, ibid., pp. 90–91.
45 Mé vzpomínky, op. cit., p. 65.
46 Miloš Havel to the Minister of Information Václav Kopecký, 9 July 1945, reprinted ibid., p. 94.
47 From an undated two-page report, written by Václav Havel and entitled, ‘Konec války na Havlově’, reprinted in Václav Havel ‘97 (Prague, 1998), pp. 124—125.
48 Mé vzpomínky, op. cit., p. 65.
49 See the fragments from the years 301—60 B.C. by Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library (London, 1700), pp. 752-753, book XXV.
50 Kopecký’s allegations are carefully listed in the letter of Miloš Havel to Václav Kopecký, 9 July 1945, reprinted in Mé vzpomínky, op. cit. pp. 88–95. Kopecký told Miloš Havel (ibid., p. 93) that he had written a paper on the negotiations with the Nazis of ‘those Havels’; unfortunately, its existence remains unproven, and its whereabouts are unknown.
51 See Miloš Havel’s ‘Report Dated 24 April 1946’, reprinted in ibid., p. 100.
52 Mé vzpomínky, op. cit., p. 66.
53 Interview with Radim Kopecký, Prague, 5 November 1998. Radim Kopecký, son of the former Czechoslovak Ambassador to Switzerland, was unrelated to Miloš Havel’s enemy, Václav Kopecký.
54 Mé vzpomínky, op. cit., p. 72.
55 Interview with František Novák, London, 7 February 1997.
56 See Mé vzpomínky, op. cit., pp. 72–73: ‘Miloš’s escape cheered us, but it brought us hard times. By October 15th, we had to move out of our flat [on the Vltava embankment] where we had lived for forty-seven years. We found out as well that Havlov was sealed. The StB [secret police] in Brno wrongly presumed that Miloš was a co-owner of Havlov.’ Until Havlov was reopened, Václav and his family had no option but to stay in Prague in the fourth-floor studio apartment previously owned by his maternal grandfather, who had died two months earlier.
57 The Czech National Socialists won 18 per cent, the People’s (Catholic) Party 16 per cent, and the Social Democrats 13 per cent; and the Slovak Democrats, who won a clear majority (61 per cent) of the votes cast in Slovakia, gained an overall 14 per cent. But easily the lion’s share of the aggregate vote was captured by the Communist Party, which won 38 per cent of the poll (40 per cent in Bohemia and Moravia and 30 per cent in Slovakia). See Hugh Seton-Watson, The East European Revolution (New York, 1961), p. 182.
58 See the accounts provided by Karel Krátký, ‘Czechs, the Soviet Union and the Marshall Plan’, in O. A. Westad, The Soviet Union in Eastern Europe 1945-1989 (New York, 1994), pp. 9–25; Karel Kaplan and Vojtěch Mastný, ‘Stalin, Czechoslovakia, and the Marshall Plan: New Documents from Czechoslovak Archives’, Bohemia, volume 32, 1 (1991), pp. 133–144.
59 Hubert Ripka, Czechoslovakia Enslaved (London, 1950) provides a detailed account of the events from the losing insider’s point of view.
60 Foreign Relations of the United States, volume 4 (US Department of State, Washington, DC, 1948), pp. 741-742.
61 See Nina Pavelčíková, ‘Pozoruhodná osobnost Hugo Vavrečky’, Lidové noviny, 6, 129 (6 June 1993); and Hugo Vavris, Život je spís román (Ostrava, 1997), especially part 1.
62 Some background details are drawn from my several interviews with Václav Havel’s brother, Ivan Havel, especially the one conducted in Prague, 23 April 1996. His brief account of the primary school is found in ‘School for the Curious’, in Open Eyes and Raised Eyebrows, manuscript (Prague, 1997), part B, pp. 92–94.
63 Story (Prague), 30 September 1998, p. 7.
64 Interview with Ivan Havel, Prague, 24 September 1997.
65 Václav Havel to his father, Havlov, 9 March 1947.
66 The following details are drawn from an interview with Havel’s classmate at Poděbrady, Alois Strnad, Prague, 28 September 1997.
67 The scene is recalled in Paul (Pavel) Fierlinger’s animated autobiography, Drawn from Memory (Acme Filmworks, PBS American Playhouse, 1998), in which voice-over commentary by Havel himself is used.
68 Miloš Forman and Jan Novak, Turnaround: A Memoir (London and Boston, 1994), pp. 55–56.
70 Lidové noviny, 1 April 1998, p. 4.
71 Interview with Viola Fischerová, Prague, 26 September 1997.
72 See the StB file mentioning ‘the very damaging ideological activity’ of Professor J. L. Fischer, in František Koudelka, Státni bezpečnost 1954—1968 (Prague 1993), p. 146.
73 Cited in Josefa Slánská, Report on My Husband (New York, 1969), pp. 4—6. The following account draws upon several works of varied quality, including Miriam Slingová, Truth Will Prevail (London, 1968); Karel Kaplan, Die politischen Prozesse in der Tschechoslowakei 1948-1954 (Munich, 1986); Artur London, The Confession (New York, 1971); and the two works by Eugen Loebl, My Mind on Trial (New York, 1976) and Die Revolution rehabilitiert ihre Kinder (Vienna, 1976). An important source, originally published in English, is Jiří Pelikán, The Czechoslovak Political Trials, 1950-1954: The Suppressed Report of the Dubček Government’s Commission of Inquiry, 1968 (Stanford, 1971). I have also consulted the transcript of Prague Radio broadcasts in the files of Radio Free Europe, Trial of Rudolf Slánský (Munich, 1952).
74 Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954, ed., Jerome Kohn (New York, San Diego, London, 1994), p. 157.
75 National Security Council directive NSC 10/2 (May 1948).
76 See Roy A. Medvedev, ‘New Pages from the Political Biography of Stalin’, in Robert C. Tucker (ed.), Stalinism. Essays in Historical Interpretation (New York, 1982), pp. 212–223.
77 H. Gordon Skilling, ‘Stalinism and Czechoslovak Political Culture’, ibid., p. 269.
78 Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon (New York, 1961). On the Soviet trials see Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1951); Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge (New York, 1971).
79 George H. Hodos, Show Trials. Stalinist Purges in Eastern Europe, 1948-1954 (New York, 1987), p. 73.
80 Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, Considérations sur les principaux événemens de la Révolution française (London, 1818), book 2, chapter 15, p. 118: ‘Because the various classes of society had almost no relations among themselves in France, their mutual antipathy was stronger... the irritability of a very sensitive nation inclined each person to jealousy towards his neighbour, towards his superior, towards his master; and all individuals not content to dominate humiliated one another.’
81 Po roce sochařské práce (After a Year of Sculptural Work [August, 1953], and dedicated to ‘the Thirty-Sixers on the occasion of the first anniversary of their activity’), p. 7. See also the interview with Havel in Antonín Liehm, The Politics of Culture (New York, 1968), pp. 379–380.
82 Po roce sochařské práce, op. cit., p. 14.
83 This and the following details of the relationship between Paukert and Havel are drawn from the radio broadcast written and presented by Paukert under his nom d’emprunt Jiří Kuběna, Z–mého orloje [From My Astronomical Clock] Czech Radio (Prague, 1997), programmes 5 (entitled ‘Přítel z poštovní schránky’ [’Friend from a Mail Box’]; 6 (untitled), and 7 (entitled ‘Havlov Revisited’); and Jiří Kuběna, Krev ve víno. Výbor z díla (1953-1995) (Olomouc, 1995), pp. 583-584.
84 Po roce sochařské práce op. cit., p. 4.
85 Václav Havel, Do různých stran, edited and introduced by Vilém Prečan, (Prague, 1986, 1990), pp. 274–76.
86 From Z mého orloje, op. cit., programme 7 (entitled ‘Havlov Revisited’).
87 Ibid., programme 6 (untitled).
88 Interview with Viola Fischerová, Prague, 26 September 1997; Pavel Kosatík, ‘Člověk má dělat to, načmá sílu’. Život Olgy Havlové (Prague, 1997), p. 58.
89 Václav Havel, Po roce sochařské práce, op. cit.
90 Further evidence of the tension is found in the previously unrecorded correspondence between Radim Kopecký and Havel. See especially Kopecký to Havel (Prague, 16 December 1952); Havel’s reply (Prague, 17 December 1952); and Kopecký to Havel (Prague, 28 December 1952).
91 Havel to Kopecký (Prague, 17 December 1952).
92 These and other functions of intermediary associations are discussed at greater length in my Democracy and Civil Society (London and New York, 1988), and Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions (Oxford and Palo Alto, 1999).
93 Z mého orloje, op. cit., programme 6 (untitled); interview with Ivan Havel (Prague), 23 April 1996.
94 Václav Havel, Disturbing the Peace (London and New York, 1990), p. 25.
95 Turnaround, op. cit., p. 56.
96 Václav Havel, 1992 & 1993 (Prague, 1994), p. 99.
97 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., p. 25.
98 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., p. 24.
99 Correspondence from Dr Louise Mares (née Marie-Luise Langrová), Sydney, Australia, 11 November 1998.
100 Interview with Viola Fischerová, Prague, 26 September 1997.
101 The Czechoslovak Political Trials, 1950-1954, op. cit., p. 111.
102 Karel Kaplan, Dans les archives du Comité Central (Paris, 1978), p. 212.
103 The proceedings are reported in four articles in Literární noviny, number 48 (1956), p. 7. One of them, presumably based on his own contribution, is written by Václav Havel and entitled ‘Program a jeho vyjádření’ (‘The Programme and its Expression’). Havel’s later account of the Dob říš conference is found in Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., pp. 28–33. A thorough search of the Czechoslovak Writers’ Union record groups stored in the state archives in Staré Hrady, near Jičín, uncovered no new material, except traces of weeded files.
104 Compare the different views of the achievements and limitations of Květen, especially Zdeněk Pešat’s mention of Havel, in Bohumil Svozil (ed.), Časopis Květen a jeho doba: Sborník materiálůz literárněvědné konference 36. Bezručovy Opavy 15-16. 9. 1993 (Prague and Opava, 1994), pp. 13–16.
105 See Václav Havel, ‘Pochyby o programu’ and the reply by Miroslav Červenka, in Květen, 2 (1956-1957), pp. 29–30.
106 Švec worked together with Jiří Štursa and his wife, Vlasta. The remark is cited in Marcela Kašpárková, ‘Udělal Stalina, chtěl taky Masaryka’, Magazín Dnes + TV, 14 October 1993, p. 9.
107 ‘Udělal Stalina, chtěl taky Masaryka’, op. cit., p. 8.
108 See the text of the speech, and other details of the unveiling, in Rudé právo, 2 May 1955, p. 3.
109 Cited in Zdeněk Hojda and Jiří Pokorný, Pomníky a zapomníky (Litomyšl, 1996), p. 213.
110 Information provided by Milena Janišová, Institute for Contemporary History, Prague, 26 June 1998. Other useful background material includes Berthold Unfried, ‘Denkmäler des Stalinismus and “Realsozialismus” zwischen Ikonoklasmus und Musealisierung’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften, 5, 2 (1994), pp. 233–258; Marcela Kašpárková’s interview with Jiří Štursa, one of the assistant architects of the monument, in ‘Udělal Stalina, chtěl taky Masaryka’, Magazín Dnes + TV 4 (4 October 1993), pp. 7–9; Josef Škvorecký, Talkin’ Moscow Blues (London and Boston, 1989), pp. 37–38; and ‘Vykřičník století aneb “Čechy krásné”’, Reality Public Reportáž, 7-8 (1996), http://www.capitol.cz/tisk/publicreality/1996 0708/page2.html.
111 From Bohumil Hrabal’s short story, ‘Betrayal of the Mirrors’, cited in Pomníky a zapomníky, op cit., p. 205.
112 See Galia Golan, The Czechoslovak Reform Movement. Communism in Crisis 1962-1968 (Cambridge, 1971), part 1; H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 1976), pp. 30–42; Edward Taborsky, ‘Czechoslovakia’s March to Communism’, Problems of Communism, 10 (March—April 1961), pp. 34—41.
113 Rudé právo (29 January 1957).
114 Rudé právo, 17 April 1960.
115 Interview with Radim Kopecký, Prague, 5 November 1998.
116 Pavel Kosatík, ‘člověk má ělat to, nač másílu’,život Olgy Havlové (Prague, 1997), p. 53.
117 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., p. 37.
118 ‘On the Edge of Spring’ (cycle of poems), published originally in samizdat form in Josef Hiršal and Jiří Kolář (eds.), Život je všude (Prague, 1956). Translated by Derek Paton.
119 ‘člověk má dělat to, načmá sílu’, Život Olgy Havlové, op. cit., p. 26.
120 Telephone interview with Karel Brynda, Jihlava and Prague, 5 November 1998.
121 The authorities’ reaction is described by Havel in Václav Havel: A Czech Drama, op. cit.
122 Martin Esslin, in his introduction to Three East European Plays (Harmondsworth, 1970), p. 16.
123 Václav Havel, Vernisáž, in Hry 1970-1976, op. cit., p. 276.
124 Klaus juncker, in the documentary film by Karel Prokop, ‘Z Dramatika prezidentem’, Česká televize (Prague, 1995).
125 1992 & 1993, op. cit., p. 20.
126 Václav Havel, ‘Politics and the Theatre’, Times Literary Supplement, 28 September 1967, p. 879.
127 Václav Havel, ‘Light on a Landscape’, in Three Vaněk Plays (London and Boston, 1990), p. viii.
128 Václav Havel, ‘Anatomie gagu’, Protokoly (Prague, 1966), pp. 126–127. Note that the English word ‘estrangement’ (Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Verfremdung’) is a poor substitute for the Czech word used by Havel — ozvláštnění — which connotes ‘distant’, ‘alien’, and ‘strange’.
129 From a conversation with Jan Grossman, filmed during 1965 at the Theatre on the Balustrade.
130 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., p. 40.
131 See Vladimír Justl, ‘Po piatich rokoch’, Slovenské divadlo, 11 (1963), pp. 489–505; and Paul I. Trensky, Czech Drama Since World War II (White Plains, 1978), pp. 104-106.
132 Ivan Vyskočil, ‘Poznámky k Autostopu’, in Autostop (Prague, 1961), p. 1727.
133 Interview with Olga Havlová, in Eva Kantůrková, ‘Olga Havlová’, Sešly jsme ν této knize (samizdat 1980 [Prague, 1991]), pp. 6–15.
134 Pavel Kosatík, ‘člověk má dělat to, nač má sílu’. život Olgy Havlové, op. cit., pp. 71,91.
135 ‘Rozhovor s Janem Nedvědem o Tváři (Druhá část)’, Střední Europa, 9, 30 (May 1993), p. 92.
136 Paul I. Trensky, Czech Drama Since World War II, op. cit., p. 108.
137 Václav Havel, The Garden Party, in Selected Plays 1963-83 (London and Boston, 1992), pp. 11–12. The translation by Vera Blackwell loses something of the bureaucratic stiffness of the original. Compare the original version printed in the collection of Havel’s plays, experimental poetry and essays, Protokoly (Prague, 1966), p. 21.
138 The Garden Party, op. cit., p. 10.
139 Andrej Krob, ‘Pokus o aktuální přemýšlení o jednom zdánlivě neaktuálním dramatikovi’, in Milý Václave... Tvůj. Přemýšlení o Václavu Havlovi (Prague, 1997), p. 83.
140 The Garden Party, op. cit., p. 50.
141 The following accounts of the crisis-ridden process of liberalization before 1968 proved useful when preparing this vignette: The Czechoslovak Reform Movement, op. cit; Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution, op. cit., part two; Kieran Williams, The Prague Spring and its aftermath. Czechoslovak politics 1968-1970 (Cambridge and New York, 1997), chapter 1.
142 See Karel Kaplan, The Communist Party in Power: A Profile of Party Politics in Czechoslovakia (London, 1987), pp. 54–101; Archive of the ČSFR Government Commission for Analysis of the Events of 1967–1970, R131, cited in The Prague Spring and its aftermath, op. cit., p. 14.
143 Good accounts of this trend include Jiří Kosta, Abriss der sozialökonomischen Entwicklung der Tschechoslowakei, 1945-1977 (Frankfurt, 1978); Martin Myant, The Czechoslovak Economy, 1948—1988: The Battle for Economic Reform (Cambridge, 1989); and Judy Batt, Economic Reform and Political Change in Eastern Europe: A Comparison of the Czechoslovak and Hungarian Experiences (London, 1988); and Karel Kaplan, Sociální souvislosti krizí komunistického režimu ν letech 1953-1957 a 1968-1975 (Prague, 1993).
144 Ference Fehér et al., Dictatorship over Needs. An analysis of Soviet societies (Oxford, 1983), p. 25.
145 Jindřich Pecka, Josef Belda and Jiří Hoppe (eds), Občanská společnost, 1967-1970. Emancipační hnutní Národní fronty, 1967-1970 (Brno, 1995), p. 8.
146 Peter Hruby, Fools and Heroes: The Changing Role of Communist Intellectuals in Czechoslovakia (Oxford, 1980), chapter 1.
147 Jacques Rupnik, ‘The Roots of Czech Stalinism’, in Raphael Samuel and Gareth Stedman-Jones (eds.), Culture, Ideology, and Politics: Essays for Eric Hobsbawn (London, 1982), p. 312.
148 On the process of ‘state-led liberalization from above’, see Guillermo O’Donnell et. al., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (Baltimore and London, 1986); and The Prague Spring and its aftermath, op. cit., especially part 1.
149 It is ironic that the new socialist understanding of power mirrored the new ‘functionalist’ understanding of power defended by Talcott Parsons, the high priest of American academic sociology, and a figure not known to be sympathetic to socialism. See Talcott Parsons, ‘On the Concept of Political Power’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, volume 107, 3 (June 1963), pp. 232–262, especially p. 243: ‘The power of A over B is, in its legitimized form, the “right” of A, as a decision-making unit involved in collective process, to make decisions which take precedence over those of B, in the interest of the effectiveness of the collective operation as a whole.’
150 Alexander Dubček, with Jiří Hochman, Hope Dies Last: The Autobiography of Alexander Dubček (London, 1993), p. 112.
151 Josef škvorecký, ‘Ten buržázní spratek’, in Milý Václave... Tvůj, op. cit., pp. 52–53.
152 See the graphic accounts provided in ‘Rozhovor s Janem Nedvědem o Tváří’, St řední Europa, 8, 29 (1993), pp. 133–145, and ‘Rozhovor s Janem Nedvědem o Tváří (Druhá část)’, Střední Europa, 9, 30 (May 1993), pp. 92–102. Nedvěd notes (p. 139) that he was informed at the time that Milan Kundera, a member of the top organ of the Writers’ Union, voted in favour of the decision to liquidate the journal. According to Kaplan (p. 50), Kundera abstained. Either way, Havel must have not been pleased with Kundera, with whose literature and politics he subsequently did not see eye-to-eye.
153 ‘Rozhovor s Janem Nedvědem o Tváří’, Střední Europa, 8, 29 (1993), p.141.
154 Trud (Moscow), 21 June 1968.
155 Václav Havel, ‘Poznámky o polovzdélanost’, Tvář, 9-10 (December, 1964), pp. 23–29.
156 Interview with Andrej Stankovič, Prague, 10 November 1998.
157 František Havlíček, ‘Nepřekročitelná hranice’ Nονá mysl number 12 (1965), pp. 1374-82.
158 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., p. 83.
159 The Writers’ Union conference had been convened to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the ‘liberation’ of Czechoslovakia. The speech, entitled ‘On Evasive Thinking’, was delivered in Prague on 9 June 1965 — exactly twenty years after he wrote his account of the air raid on Havlov. It is reprinted in Václav Havel, Open Letters. Selected Prose 1965-1990, ed. Paul Wilson (London and Boston, 1991), pp. 10–24.
160 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., pp. 87–88.
161 ‘Rozhovor s Janem Nedvědem o Tváři (Druhá čast)’, StředníEuropa, 9, 30 (May 1993), p. 94.
163 Interview with Andrej Stankovič, Prague, 10 November 1998.
164 ‘On Evasive Thinking’, in Open Letters, op. cit., pp. 10—11.
165 Fools and Heroes’, op. cit., p. xv.
166 See the account provided in Andreas Razumovsky, ‘Der Mechanismus von Feigheit und Macht’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 5 August 1965.
167 The following material is drawn from my interview with Pavel Tigrid, Prague, 18 September 1996.
168 See ‘KGB Report on the “Counterrevolutionary Underground” in Czechoslovakia, October 13, 1968’, in Jaromír Navrátil, ed., The Prague Spring 1968 (Budapest, 1998), p. 515.
169 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 8, Section 1.
170 The taped conversation, recorded in Peroutka’s apartment in mid-summer 1968, was passed by Havel to Czechoslovak Radio, whose archivists subsequently lost or miscatalogued the material.
171 See the report by Stephen Klaidman, ‘Czech Writer Here, Sees Opportunity for Liberals’, The New York Times, 5 May 1968.
172 Vaclav Havel — Czech Writer: An Interview with Joan Bakewell’, BBC Late Night Line Up (London), 26 June 1968.
173 The address is partly reprinted in The Prague Spring 1968, op. cit., pp. 9–10.
174 Člověk má dělat to, načmá su ílu’. Život Olgy Havlové, op. cit., p. 53.
175 Cited by Jan Tříska in Milý Václave... Tvůj, op. cit., pp. 68–69.
176 Milý Václave... Tvůj, op. cit., p. 67.
177 ‘KGB Report on the “Counterrevolutionary Underground” in Czechoslovakia, October 13, 1968’, in The Prague Spring 1968, op. cit., p. 515.
178 Jan Tříska, in Milý Václave... Tvůj, op. cit., pp. 65, 66.
179 See my ‘Structural Transformations of the Public Sphere’, The Communication Review, volume 1, number 1 (1995), pp. 1–22.
180 Rudéprávo (Prague), 2 May 1968.
181 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., p..94.
182 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., p. 96.
183 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., p. 95.
184 Václav Havel, ‘On the Theme of an Opposition’, Literárnílisty, 4 April 1968, translated in Open Letters, op. cit., pp. 25–35. The middle-of-the-road position staked out in Havel’s argument is revealed in H. Gordon Skilling’s good account of the debate about pluralism during this period, in Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution, op. cit., pp. 356–363.
185 The manifesto was issued on 13 May 1968 and later published as ‘Manifest Klubu angažovaných nestraníků’, Svobodné slovo (Prague), 11 July 1968, p. 1.
186 The following account draws upon an interview with Josef škvorecký, Toronto, 17 November 1996,v and Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., pp. 99–100. The scene is fictionalized in Josef škvorecký, The Miracle Game (Toronto, 1990), pp. 149—156.
187 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., p. 100.
188 John Keane, ‘The Politics of Retreat’, The Political Quarterly, volume 61, 3 (July-September 1990), pp. 340–352.
189 Edmund Burke, ‘A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, in Answer to Some Objections to His Book on French Affairs’, in The Works of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke (London, 1859), volume 4, p. 11.
190 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill (London, 1651 [1968]), part 1, chapter 11.
191 Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, op. cit.
192 Pavel Tigrid, Why Dubček Fell (London, 1971), p. 13.
193 Karl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz, ‘Vom Kriege’, in Hinterlassene Werke über Krieg und Kriegführung (Berlin, 1832-1834), Books 1-3.
194 Cited in Why Dubček Fell, op. cit., p. 94.
195 Action Programme of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, printed as a special supplement of Rudé právo (Prague), 10 April 1968, pp. 28–29.
196 Why Dubček Fell, op. cit., p. 84.
197 Robert Rhodes James (ed.), The Czechoslovak Crisis, 1968 (London, 1969), p. 29; Philip Windsor and Adam Roberts, Czechoslovakia, 1968: reform, repression and resistance (London, 1969), pp. 60–61.
198 Among the documents in my possession are ‘Výzva spolobčanům!’ (Liberec), 22 August 1968, and ‘Všem občanům!’ (Liberec), 26 August 1968.
199 ‘Člověk má dělat to, nač má sílu’. Život Olgy Havlové, op. cit., p. 104. Compare Havel’s account of the occupation of Liberec in Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., pp. 106–109. The direct quotations are from radio transcripts in my possession, dated from 23 August 1968.
200 Václav Havel’s preface to The Prague Spring 1968, op. cit., p. xvi.
201 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., p. 109.
202 Cited in Why Dubček Fell, op. cit., p. 102.
203 Why Dubček Fell, op. cit., p. 116.
204 This, and the following quotations, were kindly supplied in a letter from Professor Adam Roberts (Oxford), 25 May 1998. The StB transcript is available in Prague’s Archive of the Ministry of the Interior of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, H 3-2, i.j. 46, č.j. N/Z-0079/69.
205 Václav Havel to Alexander Dubček, 9 August 1969, reprinted and translated in Open Letters, op. cit., pp. 36–49.
206 In Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., Havel later wrote about Dubček’s non-decision: ‘He disappeared rather quietly and inconspicuously from political life; he didn’t betray his own cause by renouncing it, but he didn’t bring his political career to a very vivid end either.’
207 Milan Kundera, ‘Český úděl’, Listy, volume 1, numbers 7-8. (19 December 1968), pp. 1, 5. Havel’s reply, ‘Český úděl?’ Tvář, 2 (1969), pp. 30–33, is printed in Vaclav Havel, O lidskou identitu (London, 1984), pp. 195–196. Kundera’s reply to Havel, ‘Radikalismus a exihibicionismus’, appeared in Host do domu, volume 15 (1969), number 15, pp. 24–29, and was reprinted in Svědectvtí, 74 (1985), pp. 343–349. The two writers subsequently made amends. See Kundera’s homage to Havel, ‘A Life Like a Work of Art’, The New Republic, 202 (29 January 1990), pp. 16–17, and Milan Kundera’s letter to Havel, 24 October 1986.
208 See the interview conducted by Jiří Nožka, ‘What He’s Thinking About’, Svět ν obrazech, 48 (14 December 1968), reprinted in ibid., 1 (5 January 1990), pp. 4–5.
209 Václav Havel, ‘Dovětek autora’, Hry 1970-1976 (Toronto, 1977), p. 307.
210 Oldřich Tůma, ‘Dubček and Legislative Measure No. 99’, paper presented to the One Day Colloquium on Alexander Dubček, held at the Slovak Embassy, London, 7 November 1998.
211 The following details are drawn from Karel Kaplan, Political Persecution in Czechoslovakia 1948-1972 (Köln, 1983), especially pp. 27–40; Milan Šimečka, Obnovení pořádku (samizdat, 1978, and Köln, 1979).
212 Gustáv Husák, ‘May Day Speech’, in Information Bulletin of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, 4 (Prague, 1984), p. 9.
213 Quoted from the documentary film by Olga Sommerová, A znovu Žebrácká opera (Beggar’s Opera Revisited), Česká televize 1 (Prague, 1996).
214 Cited in Divadlo na tahu: 1975-1995 (Prague, 1996), pp. 16, 14.
215 Cited in Eda Kriseová, Václav Havel: The Authorized Biography (New York, 1993), p. 93.
216 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., p. 125.
217 From the documentary film by Karel Prokop, Z Dramatika prezidentem, Česká televize 2 (Prague, 1995).
218 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., p. 125.
219 Václav Havel, ‘Dear Dr Husák’, in Open Letters, op. cit., pp. 50–83.
220 See ‘Une centaine de personnalités se réclament la garantie des exercices des droits fondamentaux’, Le Monde (Paris), 7 January 1977, p. 3; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt), 7 January 1977, p. 5, which refers to ‘the non-Party playwright Václav Havel’; and ‘Manifesto Challenge by Prague Dissidents’, The Times (London), 7 January 1977, pp. 1, 4.
221 Charta 77: Začátky, part one of a two-part documentary produced by Česká televize 2 (Prague, 1996).
222 H. Gordon Skilling, Charter 77 and Human Rights in Czechoslovakia (London, 1981), p. 4.
223 Vilém Prečan, Kniha Charty (Köln, 1977), pp. 22–23.
224 Václav Havel, ‘Breaking the ice barrier’, an interview on BBC, first published in Index on Censorship, volume 7, number 1 (January–February 1978), pp. 25—28.
225 The interview appears in Kurier (Vienna), 31 March 1978. It was reprinted in Listy, volume 8, number 5 (September 1978), pp. 63—65; and in Infoch, number 5 (1978), pp. 5–7.
226 The Prague meeting was held on 28 January 1977, and is treated in Charta 77: Začátky, op. cit., part one.
227 Charta 77: Začátky, op. cit., part one.
228 Václav Havel, ‘Prohlášení’ (‘Declaration’), 21 May 1977, cited in The Times (London), 23 May 1977.
229 Josef Frolík, Špión vypovídá (Prague, 1990 [1982]), p. 273.
230 See for example Práce (Prague), 11 March 1977; Rudé právo, 12 January 1977; Pravda (Bratislava), 12 January 1977; Who is Václav Havel? (Kdo je Václav Havel?), originally broadcast on Czechoslovak Radio on 9 March 1977.
231 The theory of sovereign power is discussed in my ‘Dictatorship and the Decline of Parliament’, in Democracy and Civil Society, op. cit., pp. 153–189; Harold J. Laski, The Foundations of Sovereignty and Other Essays (London, 1921); and Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Cambridge, Mass., 1985).
232 Jean Bodin, Les Six Livres de la République (Paris, 1576), book 1, chapter 8.
233 ‘Poslední rozhovor’, O lidskou identitu, op. cit., pp. 152–155; the sentences cited here are slightly altered from the English translation, which appeared as ‘Last Conversation’, in Charter 77 and Human Rights in Czechoslovakia, op. cit., pp. 242–244.
234 Rudé právo, 21 May 1977.
235 Václav Havel, ‘Prohlášení’ (‘Declaration’), 21 May 1977, cited in The Times (London), 23 May 1977.
236 See his letter dated 1 June 1977 (O lidskou identitu, op. cit., p. 278); and the interview conducted around the end of September 1977, later published in London, ibid., pp. 250–256.
237 See ‘Last Word before the Court’ (18 October 1977), ibid., pp. 327–330.
238 Ludvík Vaculík, ‘Poznámky o statečnosti’, dated 6 December 1978, circulated in typewritten samizdat form, and dedicated to the author Karel Pecka, on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday. See also Petr Pithart’s reply dated 31 December 1978; Havel’s reply to Vaculík dated 25 January 1979; and Havel’s reply to Pithart dated 1 February 1979. Vaculík’s early reaction to the controversy about courage is chronicled in Český snář (samizdat and Prague, 1990), entry dated Thursday, 25 January 1979. I have also consulted Václav Havel’s introduction to Ludvík Vaculík, A Cup of Coffee with My Interrogator (London, 1987), pp. i—iv.
239 Interview with Ludvík Vaculík, Prague, 23 April 1996. See also his comments in Český snář, op. cit.
240 Some examples include Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis (London, 1720), Book 1, chapter 2, section 5 and Book 1, chapter 19, section 62; Epictetus, Discourses (Glasgow, 1766), Book 1, chapter 18, section 21; Plautus, Amphitryon; or The two Socia’s. A Comedy (London, 1690), 1. 646 (Act 1, scene 2),; and Plutarch, The Lives of Aristeides and Marcus Cato (London, 1928), chapter 10, section 4.
241 Translated by Paul Wilson, the essay appeared in English in The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe, edited by John Keane (London, 1985). This volume includes a selection of nine other essays addressed to Havel’s thesis from an original collection of Czech and Slovak responses.
242 William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2.
243 Václav Havel, ‘Dovětek autora’, in Hry 1970-1976 (Toronto, 1977), p. 306.
244 See Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, ‘Decisions and Nondecisions: An Analytical Framework’, American Political Science Review, volume 57 (1963), pp. 632-642.
245 Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk’s notion of ‘small-scale initiatives’ (drobná práce) referred to the importance of honest, responsible work in widely different areas of life, but contained within the existing social order. It emphasized the importance of cultivating morality and privileging enlightened education for the ultimate purpose of stimulating national self-confidence and national creativity. This notion of ‘working for the good of the nation’ not only supposed the availability of a framework of civil and political liberties within which citizens could get on with their work. It was also strongly wedded to a politics of national reconstruction, that is to say, a project of developing and defending the right of nations to govern themselves through territorially sovereign states. ‘The Power of the Powerless’ was implicitly sympathetic to the same goal, but Havel’s silence about ‘the national question’ was at this stage hard to interpret. He was forced later to come clean.
246 György Konrád, Anti-Politics (London, 1984).
247 The Power of the Powerless, op. cit., p. 205. Compare Václav Žák’s original criticism of Havel and others for confusing ‘the level of thinking about individual responsibility and the level of thinking about the operation of society’, in ‘Co je naše tradice’ (samizdat, Prague, 1986).
248 This criticism of Havel is analysed in ‘Co je naše tradice’, op. cit.
249 Václav Černý, Paměti 1945-1972 (Brno, 1992 [1983]), p. 162. Černý reportedly added that Havel was ‘utterly beside himself if a week went by without the world talking about him’.
250 Robert B. Pynsent, ‘The Work of Václav Havel’, SEER, volume 73, 2 (April 1995), p. 271.
251 Václav Bělohradský, ‘Jubileum’, in Milý Václave... Tvůj, op. cit., p. 27.
252 Stanislaw Baranczak, Breathing Under Water and Other East European Essays (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1990), p. 54.
253 Cited in Open Letters, op. cit., pp. 125–126.
254 Der Spiegel, 23 (31 May 1976), pp. 193ff.
255 Václav Havel, Letters to Olga, op. cit., pp. 23–24.
256 Letters to Olga, op. cit., p. 138.
259 Letters to Olga, op. cit., p. 147.
260 Havel here referred to Anna Kohoutová, with whom he was having an affair until the morning he was dragged from her bed, to begin this spell in prison. Stories of the affair are told by her daughter, Tereza Boučková, in her Indiánský běh (Prague, 1992; first published in samizdat) and an interview published in Magazín Dnes + TV (Prague), 10 September 1999, pp. 22–24. Boučková recalls that Havel, nicknamed ‘Monolog’, consummated the fantasy of sitting in a chair to watch Anna and her daughter strip naked; that Anna tried hard, without success, to get pregnant; and, after Havel was flung into Ruzyně, that his lover attempted to communicate with him by frequenting an adjoining children’s playground, where she played waltzes at full blast on a cassette player (Indiánský běh, op. cit., pp. 43, 122, 127).
261 Letters to Olga, op. cit., p. 160.
262 Interview with Josef Topol (Prague), 6 March 1999.
263 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., p. 161.
264 Letters to Olga, op. cit., p. 277.
265 Zdeněk Urbánek, ‘Poděkování’, Ztracená země (Prague, 1992), pp. 472–473.
266 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., p. 157.
267 Salman Rushdie (in an interview transmitted on National Public Radio [New York, 21 April 1999]) praised Letters to Olga as among the small handful of his favourite books (which included James Joyce’s Ulysses) that he carried everywhere during his years of hiding from possible execution.
268 The impression is certainly reinforced by considering one letter not included in either the English edition or the published Czech edition organized by Havel’s friend, Jan Lopatka. It was a reply to Olga’s earlier remark that Kamila Bendová, wife of Havel’s prisonmate Václav Benda, had said that Havel never seemed to write such beautiful love letters to Olga as she received from her husband. So Havel tried to prove her wrong by writing just such a letter. ‘We nicknamed it The Love Letter’, said Ivan Havel later (in an interview, in Prague, on 24 September 1997). It turned out to be an essay on how to write love letters. It revealed how he seemed unable to write an open, warm, loving letter.
269 Interview with Pavel Kosatík (Prague), 30 September 1997; and with Anna Freimanová (Prague), 9 November 1998.
270 Letters to Olga, op. cit., p. 27.
271 Eric Bailey, ‘The First Lady of Prague. An Interview with Olga Havel’, Telegraph Weekend Magazine, September 1990, p. 18.
272 Marcela Pecháčková, Olga’, Magazín Dnes + TV, 8 February 1996, p. 10.
273 Anastázie Kudrnová, ‘Šedesátiny Ferdinanda Vaňka’, Magazín Lidových novin, volume 1, number 1 (4-10 October 1996), p. 20.
274 Interview with her good friend and colleague Olga Stankovičová, Prague, 10 November 1998.
275 Hana Primusová and Milena Pekárková, Olga (Prague, 1997), p. 49.
278 Zdeněk Urbánek, ‘Opora’, ibid., p. 13.
279 Olga, op. cit., pp. 36, 60.
280 Cited in Marcela Pecháčková, ‘Olga’, Magazín Dnes + TV, 8 February 1996, p. 8.
281 Ibid., p. 10. See also Olga, op. cit., p. 29.
282 Josef Topol, cited in Olga, op. cit., pp. 20–21.
284 Interview with Pavel Kosatík, Prague, 30 September 1997; and ’Člověk má dělat to, nač má sílu’. Život Olgy Havlové, op. cit., pp. 189–223.
286 Marcela Pecháčková, ‘Olga’, Magazín Dnes + TV, 8 February 1996, pp. 11–12, where Landovský recalls: ‘Olinka didn’t like me much, and the worst thing that could happen to Vašek was to be caught with me. She was right in guessing that there were good times and girls around me and she wanted to have him only for herself. I think that Olinka was happiest when he was in prison and no one else was allowed to write to him. She could restrain Vašek best when he was under lock and key.’
287 Interview with Pavel Kosatík, Prague, 30 September 1997.
288 Letters to Olga, op. cit., p. 184.
289 Interview with Jiřina Šiklová, Prague, 19 September 1996.
290 Václav Havel to Jitka Vodňanská, 17 November 1983.
291 Interview with Jitka Vodňanská, Prague, 9 November 1998.
292 Václav Havel to Jitka Vodňanská, 12 January 1988.
294 First published in samizdat in the Edice Petlice series as Václav Havel, Largo desolato: hra o sedmi obrazech (Prague, 1984). I have also consulted the German edition translated by Joachim Bruss and edited by Siegfried Lenz, Largo Desolato: Schauspiel in sieben Bildern (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1985), and the English translation and adaptation by Tom Stoppard, Largo Desolato: A Play in Seven Scenes (London and Boston, 1987). Dutch, French, and Italian translations also appeared during this period.
295 Disturbing the Peace, op. cit., p. 66.
296 Cited in the documentary film by Karel Prokop, ‘Z Dramatika prezidentem’, Česká televize 2 (Prague, 1995).
297 Václav Havel, ‘My temptation’, Index on Censorship, volume 15, number 10 (November/December 1986), p. 21.
298 ‘My temptation’, op. cit., p. 19.
299 Aristotle, Política, Book 5, chapter 2, section 8.
300 Václav Havel to Vilém Prečan, 5 November 1989 (Archives of the Czechoslovak Documentation Centre, Scheinfeld, number 1523/89).
301 Cited in Svobodné slovo, 18 November 1989.
302 Cited in Todd Brewster, ‘The People Rise’, Life (New York), February 1990, p. 32.
303 Interview with John Bok (Prague), 1 October 1997.
304 The text appeared as Provolání (Prague, 19 November 1989). It is reproduced in John F. N. Bradley, Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution. A Political Analysis (New York, 1992), annex 8.
305 See the second of the two-part documentary on Charta 77, ‘Changes’, Česká televize (Prague, 1996), op. cit. ‘It seems that we are living in thrilling, extraordinary, even dramatic times,’ runs one soundbite. ‘State power is on the one hand heightening its repression against citizens, arresting them, squirting them [stříkat ze stříkaček — much laughter in the crowd]. On the other hand, society is beginning to lose its fear, and more and more people are unafraid of publicly expressing their true opinions.’
306 Citedin Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution, op. cit., p. 102. Other day-by-day accounts include Timothy Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of ‘89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague (New York, 1990); and Bernard Wheaton and Zdeněk Kavan, The Velvet Revolution: Czechoslovakia, 1988-1991 (Boulder, Colorado, 1992).
307 Cited in Bernard Gwertzman and Michael T. Kaufman (eds.), The Collapse of Communism by the Correspondents of ‘The New York Times’ (New York, 1990), p. vii.
308 See the various documents assembled in Jan Vladislav and Vilém Prečan (eds.), Czechoslovakia: Heat in January 1989 (Scheinfeld-Schwarzenberg, 1989).
309 Josef Škvorecký, ‘Ten buržoazní spratek’, in Milý Václave ... Tvůj, op. cit., p. 54; the remark by Henry Kissinger is found in the documentary film, Why Havel?, directed by Vojtěch Jasný, narrated by Miloš Forman (Los Angeles, 1990).
311 Interview with Petr Oslzlý (Brno), 7 November 1998.
312 ‘Ein Wort über das Wort,’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt), 16 October 1989, p. 13.
313 The following details are drawn from the research note prepared by Blanka Císařovská (Institute for Contemporary History, Prague, 30 September 1997).
314 William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will, Act 1, Scene 5.
315 From the interview with Ivan Lamper, ‘Terén, na který nikdy nevstoupím’, Sport (Prague), 1, 3 (September 1989), pp. 6–11.
316 Václav Havel, ‘An hour between a bankrupt and a politician’, Lidové noviny, 10 (October 1989), pp. 1–2.
317 The following account is taken from the gripping transcript of the meeting reproduced in Jiří Suk (ed.), Občanské fórum (Prague, 1997), volume 2, pp. 80–90.
318 Speech to the Joint Session of the US Congress (Washington, D.C., 21 February 1990)’, in Toward a Civil Society. Selected Speeches and Writings 1990-1994 (Prague 1995), p. 31.
319 The details of the meeting divulged here for the first time are drawn from my interview with Petr Pithart, Scheinfeld, 15 September 1996; my interview with Oldřich Tůma (London, 10 June 1997); the roundtable discussion between Petr Pithart, Jiří Kantůrek and others in Proměny politického systému ν Československu na přelomu let 1989/1990 (Prague, 1995), pp. 78–81; and the brief account provided in Jiří Suk (ed.), Občanské fórum (Prague and Brno, 1997), volume 1, pp. 30–31.
320 According to Jaroslav Šabata, reporting the informed estimate provided by a ‘worried-looking but resigned’ Zdeněk Jičínský on the day before Havel announced his candidacy, ‘there were about thirty supporters of the candidacy of Václav Havel, against whom there were about half a dozen supporters of Alexander Dubček.’ See Jaroslav Šabata, Sedmkrát sedm kruhů (Olomouc, 1997), p. 103.
321 Interview with His Excellency Pavel Seifter, London, 15 March 1999.
322 Transcripts of nine rounds of talks that took place between 26 November and 9 December 1989 were printed after the revolution in Vladimír Hanzel, Zrychlený tep dějin (Prague, 1991). There were other meetings that went unrecorded, and it is unclear whether, for reasons of confidentiality or reputation, the invisible hand of Havel subsequently touched the manuscript. Further useful comments are to be found in Miloš Calda, ‘The Roundtable Talks in Czechoslovakia’, in Jon Elster (ed.), The Roundtable Talks and the Breakdown of Communism (Chicago and London 1996), pp. 135–177.
323 Václav Havel and Milan Kňažko to Ladislav Adamec, 5 December 1989.
324 The proposal, which went unrecorded, is minuted in Jiří Suk (ed.), Občanské fórum op. cit., volume 2, p. 90.
325 From the Czechoslovak Television address on 16 December 1989.
326 Občanské fórum, op. cit., volume 1, p. 31.
327 The previously unrecorded account of the secret meeting is based on material provided in an interview with Stanislav Milota (Prague), 2 October 1997, and my correspondence (Prague, 24 November 1998) with František Vlasák, who wrote: ‘I am very glad to confirm that in mid-December 1989 six brief meetings took place between Mr Havel and Mr Dubček, which I, at the request of both, arranged, and, together with Milota, organized at various places in Prague. The result of these complicated talks was the agreement that Mr Havel would be the candidate for office of President of the ČSSR and Mr Dubček for office of Leader of the National Assembly of the ČSSR. The last meeting took place after 15 December.’
328 See the transcripts reprinted in Občanské fórum, op. cit., volume 2, pp. 263–272.
329 ‘New Year’s Address to the Nation’, in Toward a Civil Society, op. cit., p. 19.
330 Interview with Petr Pithart, Scheinfeld, 15 September 1996.
331 Friedrich von Hardenberg was born on 2 May 1772 at the Castle of Oberwiedenthal in Thuringia, about 200 kilometres from Prague. His father belonged to the Moravians, and he was raised in Pietist circles. After attending school in Brunswick, he studied law at the universities of Jena, Wittenberg, and Leipzig, where he made contact with Romantics like Friedrich Schlegel. He also attended the mining academy at Freiberg and professionally his last years, which were marred by the deep sorrow of bereavement and unconsummated love, were spent in the department of mining of which his father was director. He became known as the region’s most important Romantic poet. His principal works include the cycles Hymnen an die Nacht and Geistliche Lieder, prose tales like ‘Die Lehrlinge zu Sais’ and ‘Heinrich von Ofterdingen’, and philosophical and political works such as Die Christenheit oder Europa (1799), Die Enzyklopädie and Glauben und Liebe oder der König und die Königin (1798). His politics were infused with qualified support for the principles of the French Revolution, while his poetry was steeped in the longing for death, of which night is the leading image. Von Hardenberg died of tuberculosis in Weissenfels, Thuringia, on 25 March 1801.
332 Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), Schriften (5 volumes; Stuttgart, 1977-1988), volume 2, p. 522.
333 Ibid., volume 3, p. 416, no. 762.
334 Ibid., volume 2, p. 489, no. 18.
335Schriften, op. cit., volume 2, p. 545, no. 105. See also ibid., p. 537, no. 55 and p. 534, no. 37,
336 Cited in Richard Samuel, ‘Einleitung’, in Schriften, op. cit., volume 2, p. 479.
337 Milan Šimečka to Václav Havel, 11 December 1989.
338 Interview with Stanislav Milota, Prague, 2 October 1997.
339 On the late classical roots of the royal entry, see Ernst H. Kantorowicz, ‘The “King’s Advent” and the Enigmatic Panels in the Doors of Santa Sabina’, Art Bulletin, 26 (1944), pp. 207–231; Gordon Kipling, Enter the King. Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph (Oxford, 1998); and Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450-1650 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984).
340 Compare the different usages of a similar term by Roy Strong, Splendor at Court: Renaissance Spectacle and the Theatre of Power (Boston, 1973) and Clifford Geert’z, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, 1980).
341 Interview with Petr Oslzlý, Brno, 7 November 1998.
342 From Why Havel?, op. cit.
343 Interview with Andrej Stankovič, Masaryk Library, Prague Castle, 9 November 1998.
344 Interview with Andrej Stankovič, op. cit.
345 See Paul Berman, A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968 (New York, 1996), p. 197: ‘Head turned away from camera. Face buried itself in hands. Televised mortification!... The ambassador from the United States volunteered that she did know something about Mr Zappa’s daughter, Moon Unit. Czechoslovakia was aghast. People had no way to account for the United States ambassador’s boorish airport behavior, except to mark her down as a cultural ignoramus who lacked the aplomb to boast to all of Central Europe about one of America’s finest sons, the brilliant Zappa, a world figure in the field of popular music.’ See also the transcript of the conversation between Havel and Reed in Hanif Kureishi and Jon Savage, The Faber Book of Pop (London and Boston, 1995), pp. 696-709.
346 The book of letters and sketches, with an introduction by Havel’s personal assistant, Vladimir Hanzel, was published as Myli pane prezidente (Prague, 1992).
347 Eda Kriseová, Václav Havel. Životopis (Prague, 1991).
348 Michael T. Kaufman, ‘Once Upon a Time in Prague’, The New York Times Book Review, 24 October 1993, p. 33.
349 Interview with Prince Karel Schwarzenberg, Prague, 19 September 1997.
350 From Why Havel?, op. cit.
351 Interview with Stanislav Milota, Prague, 2 October 1997.
352 The New York Times (31 May 1990) reported that only at the end of May 1990 was the Castle cleared of listening devices (‘bugs’) planted by unknown persons. See also ‘“Free” Czechoslovakia? Shadows over the Transition’, www.security—policy.org/papers/1990/90-55.html.
353 Jan Novak, Commies, Crooks, Gypsies, Spooks and Poets (South Royalton, 1995), p. 113.
354 There were initially ten core aides clustered around Havel: the music adviser and organizer of public meetings and events, Ladislav Kantor; Eda Kriseová, who headed the newly established Office of Amnesties and Complaints; Jiří Křižan, a screen writer who shadowed the Ministry of Interior; Miroslav Kvašňák, who was in charge of Havel’s bodyguards; Miroslav Masák, the Castle architect; the head of protocol, Stanislav Milota; Petr Oslzlý, who was in charge of promoting freedom of cultural expression; the visual artist Joska Skalník; the foreign-affairs adviser (and subsequently Ambassador to the United States) Alexandr Vondra; and Michael Žantovský, Havel’s personal spokesman.
355 From Why Havel?, op. cit.
356 Interview with Jan Urban, Prague, 3 November 1998. See also his important article, ‘Bezmocnost mocných’, Listy, volume 23, 5 (1993), pp. 3–10.
357 The first edition of the book by Robert Michels was published in Germany, with the title Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie (Leipzig, 1911). A new edition, somewhat revised, with an added chapter on the war, was published in Italy in late 1914. The English edition, published in 1915, was based on the Italian version.
358 From a speech in acceptance of the Sonning Prize, Copenhagen, 28 May 1991, in Toward a Civil Society, op. cit., p. 137.
359 Interview with Josef Topol, Prague, 6 March 1999.
360 Frorn Why Havel?, op. cit.
361 Interview with Jan Urban, Prague, 3 November 1998.
362 Clive James, Fame in the 20th Century (London, 1993), p. 243.
363 Interview with Gabriela Müllerová, London, September 1997.
364 William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2, Scene 5.
365 The following material is drawn from an interview with Stanislav Milota, Prague, 2 October 1997.
366 Interview with Jiřina Šiklová, Prague, 19 September 1996.
367 The dispute with Kantor is confirmed in interviews with Olga Stankovičová, Prague, 10 November 1998; and with Stanislav Milota, Prague, 2 October 1997.
368 Interview with Olga Stankovičová, Prague, 10 November 1998.
369 Interview with Zdeněk Jičínský, Prague, 25 September 1996; see also his Československý parlament ν polistopadovém vývoji (Prague 1993), pp. 106–111.
370 Václav Havel, Summer Meditations on Politics, Morality and Civility in a Time of Transition. (London and Boston, 1992), pp. xvi-xvii; Vaclav Havel, Váženi občané (Prague, 1992), pp. 16–18
371 Mladáfronta Dnes, 16 June 1992, p. 1.
372 One version of this old maxim about the unintended dynamic consequences of revolutionary politics was presented during the French Revolution by the greatest German liberal of the time, Georg Forster. See his Kleine Schriften und Briefe, ed. Claus Träger (Leipzig, 1961), p. 344: ‘The Revolution is a hurricane; who can harness it? Galvanized by its spirit, human beings find it possible to commit actions that posterity, out of sheer horror, will be unable to comprehend.’
373 See Juan J. Linz, ‘The Perils of Presidentialism’, Journal of Democracy, volume 1, number 1 (Winter 1990), pp. 51–69.
374 The dualism between monarchs and estates — which developed nowhere else in the world, and was the forerunner of the polarity between state and civil society of the early modern era — is basic to understanding the origins of European parliamentary assemblies, as is pointed out in the classic essay by Otto Hintze, ‘Weltgeschichtliche Bedingungen der Repräsentativverfassung [1931]’, in Staat und Verfassung (Göttingen, 1970), pp. 140–185.
375 Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois (Paris 1979), volume 1, Book XI, chapter 4, p. 293.
376 Reprinted in The Prague Spring 1968, op. cit., p. 8.
377 Stanley Fish, There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing, Too (New York and Oxford 1994); John Keane, The Media and Democracy (Oxford and New York, 1991).
378 Interview with Jan Urban (Prague), 3 November 1998. The Sacher affair first surfaced in the Czechoslovak press during mid-April 1990, for instance in Lidové noviny (Prague), in the week beginning 18 April, and in Respekt (Prague), 25 April — 1 May 1990.
379 Interview with Petruška Šustrová (Scheinfeld), 14 September 1996.
380 The following draws upon Herman Schwartz, ‘Lustration in Eastern Europe’, Parker School Journal of East European Law, volume 1, number 2 (1994), pp. 141—171; Jiřina Šiklová, ‘Lustration or the Czech Way of Screening’, East European Constitutional Review, volume 5, number 1 (Winter 1996), pp. 57–62; the interview with Petruška Šustrová, op. cit.; and detailed correspondence from Václav Žák (Prague), 14 March 1999.
381 Both quotations are from Jeri Laber, ‘Witch Hunt in Prague’, The New York Review of Books (23 April 1992), p. 8.
382 From a speech in acceptance of an honorary doctorate awarded by New York University, 27 October 1991, reprinted in Toward a Civil Society, op. cit., p. 158.
383 In an interview with Dana Emingerová and Luboš Beniak, ‘Nejistota posiluje’, Mladýsvět (Prague), 13 May 1991, p. 16.
384 An account of Kavan’s case appears in Lawrence Weschler, Calamities of Exile (Chicago, 1998), pp. 63–135.
385 Interview with Senator Jan Kavan, Prague, 23 September 1997.
386 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act 1, Scene 3; compare the almost identical formulation in the typewritten and hand-corrected samizdat interview, originally conducted by Antoine Spire in Prague, and finally dated 3 April 1983.
387 The Politics of Culture, op. cit., p. 374.
388 Václav Havel, Summer Meditations on Politics, Morality and Civility in a Time of Transition (London and Boston, 1992), p. 11.
389 From my conversation with Václav Klaus after he delivered the Hayek Memorial Lecture, London, 17 June 1997.
390 Niccoló Machiavelli, Il principe, chapter 18.
391 Interview with Ivan Havel, Prague, 23 April 1996.
392 Interview with Jacques Rupnik, Paris, 29 April 1998.
393 From the essay on Klaus by Petr Nováček in Týden (Prague), 8 December 1997, pp. 30–34. The same point was made in my interviews with Pavel Tigrid, Prague, 18 September 1996, and Prince Karel Schwarzenberg, Prague, 19 September 1997.
394 Havel to Kopecký (Prague, 17 December 1952).
395 Kopecký to Havel (Prague, 16 December 1952); Kopecký to Havel (Prague, 28 December 1952).
396 Česká televize 2 (Prague), 12 March 1996.
397 See the contributions by Havel and others to John Keane (ed.), Civil Society and the State. New European Perspectives (London, 1988; reissued 1998). Compare his interesting comment, written in 1988, on the dustjacket of Democracy and Civil Society, op. cit.: ‘The various political shifts and upheavals within the communist world all have one thing in common: the undying urge to create a genuine civil society.’
398 ‘New Year’s Address to the Nation’ (Prague, 1 January 1992), in Václav Havel, Toward a Civil Society. Selected Speeches and Writings 1990-1994 (Prague, 1995), p. 174. Compare the tougher words against Klaus in ‘A Crying Need for Intellectuals: an interview’, The New Presence (April 1999), p. 16: ‘He sees things solely in terms of responsible individuals, the blind laws of the market and a centralized state: everything else he regards as nonsense. It is a very short-sighted, political attitude — if not actually suicidal.’
399 1992 & 1993, op. cit., pp. 90, 53-54.
400 See my discussion of national identity and nationalism in Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions, op. cit., pp. 79–113.
401 Stanislava Dufková, ‘Hovory z Lán’, an interview with President Vaclav Havel recorded at Hrádecek on 2 November 1991, broadcast on Československy Rozhlas Radio Network at 13.15 GMT on 3 November 1991.
402 Sharon Wolchik, ‘The Politics of Ethnicity in Post-Communist Czechoslovakia’, East European Politics and Societies, 8, 1 (1994), p. 178.
403 Zdeněk Jičínský, ‘Ke ztroskotání československého federalismu’, in Rüdiger Kipke and Karel Vodička (eds.), Rozloučení s Československem (Prague, 1993), p. 77.
404 Václav Havel, ‘Základ identity splečného státu’, Narodna obroda (Bratislava), 18 September 1990.
405 Jozef Prokeš, ‘Otvorené list prezidentovi SFR’, Slovenská národ (Bratislava), 24 October 1990.
406 Karl-Peter Schwarz, Tschechen und Slowaken: Der lange Weg zur friedlichen Trennung (Vienna, 1993), p. 222.
407 Interview with Petr Pithart (Scheinfeld), 15 September 1996. See also his ‘The Break-Up of Czechoslovakia’, Scottish Affairs, 8 (Summer 1994), pp. 20–24.
408 Juraj Mihalík, from the manuscript Vzpomínky na zlyhania, cited in Colm Tóibín, The Sign of the Cross. Travels in Catholic Europe (London, 1994), p. 234.
409 The Sign of the Cross, op. cit., p. 235.
410 Eric Stein, Czecho/Slovakia. Ethnic Conflict, Constitutional Fissure, Negotiated Breakup (Ann Arbor, 1997), p. 2.
411 Sharon L. Wolchik, ‘The Politics of Transition and the Break-Up of Czechoslovakia’, in Jiří Musil (ed.), The End of Czechoslovakia, op. cit., p. 229.
412 See ‘Komu věří Slováci’ (‘Whom the Slovaks trust’), Lidové noviny, 25 October 1991, p. 2.
413 Václav Havel, Letní přemítaní (Prague, 1991), pp. 18–19.
414 An excellent account of the events is provided by Václav Zák, ‘The Velvet Divorce — Institutional Foundations’, in Jiří Musil (ed.), The End of Czechoslovakia (Budapest, London and New York, 1995), pp. 244–268.
415 These are the opening words of Karel Čapek’s ‘Introduction’, in Karel Čapek et al, At the Cross-Roads of Europe. A Historical Outline of the Democratic Idea in Czechoslovakia (Prague, 1938), p. 3.
416 Interview with Paul Wilson, Toronto, 17 November 1996.
417 The Prague Post, volume 4, 3 (19-25 January 1994), p. 1.
418 Václav Havel to President Richard von Weizsäcker, Prague, 5 November 1989.
419 Examples include the President’s attack on ‘provincial mistrust’ and ‘Czechocentrism’ in the address from Lány on 14 January 1994.
420 Asanace: hra o pěti jednáních (Münich, 1988 [first published the previous year in samizdat in Prague]), p. 95. Compare the almost identical remarks in the interview, ‘The struggle to be free needs support’, The Nation (Bangkok) 18 February 1994.
421 1992 & 1993, op. cit., p. 83; see also his treatments of the Mitteleuropa theme, ibid., pp. 124, 148, and his introduction, dated August 1996, to a small brochure about the Barrandov studios.
422 From the speech after receiving the President’s Medal at The George Washington University, Washington, DC, 22 April 1993, reprinted in Toward a Civil Society, op. cit., p. 228. The same argument that ‘Fate’ chose the Jews to make ‘modern humanity face up to its responsibility’ appears in Václav Havel, Vážení občané (Prague, 1992), p. 108. Note the foul version of the understanding of the Holocaust as Destiny: Hitler’s certainty, from 1936, that his actions were ordained by Providence. ‘I go with the certainty of a sleepwalker along the path laid out for me by Providence’, he told a jubilant crowd in Munich on 14 March 1936 (quoted in Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris (Harmondsworth 1998), p. 527.
423 1992 & 1993, op. cit., pp. 91, 80, 174.
424 All quotations concerning the signing of the treaty are from The Prague Post (Prague), 3-9 March 1992, p. 1.
425 Speech delivered to the European Parliament, Strasbourg, 8 March 1994, in Toward a Civil Society, op. cit., pp. 291–303.
426 An example of this (typical) kind of reasoned argument is ‘The Hope for Europe’, a public address delivered in Aachen, 15 May 1996, reprinted in The New York Review of Books, 20 June 1996, pp. 38–41.
427 Timothy Garton Ash, ‘The moral leader of Europe’, Independent (London), 21 October 1998, p. 5.
428 Telephone conversation with Ivan Havel, Prague and London, 16 April 1998. Compare the remarks of Karel Srp, in News (Vienna) 23 April 1998, p. 74: ‘Had it happened in Prague, he would have died. The Austrian doctors and his wife Dagmar saved him.’
429 The best-researched account is provided by Paul Berman, ‘The Philosopher-King is Mortal’, The New York Times Magazine, 11 May 1997, pp. 32–59.
430 II principe, op. cit., chapter 25.
431 Hovory z Lán, Czech Radio (Prague), 5 January 1997.
432 Interview with Jiří Pehe, Prague, 5 March 1999.
433 Česká televizé 1 (Prague), 24 December 1997.
434 Mladá fronta Dnes (25 August 1997). The ensuing controversy is documented in Lidové noviny (26 August 1997) and Mladá fronta Dnes (27 August 1997).
435 See the insightful remarks of Jindřich Ginter, ‘Z herečky se první dáma nestala’, Slovo (Prague), 8 November 1997.
436 Blesk (Prague), 30 October 1997. Worse was to come. In October 1998, Prague’s TV Nova, the most talked-about private television station in central-eastern Europe, reported that the marriage of the presidential couple was in crisis. The claim was based on a then-unpublished book co-authored by Přemysl Svora, Sedm týdnů, které otřásly Hradem [Seven Days that Shook the Castle] (Prague, 1998). Following the programme, the Havels vigorously denied the allegations and filed a libel suit against TV Nova. Dáša accused its mogul, Vladimir Železny (whose name means ‘iron’ in Czech) of trying to blackmail the President into pardoning Zelezny’s son David, a convicted rapist. Železny replied that the President’s wife made him nauseous. ‘I consider the statement by the First Lady, I stress ‘lady’, of this country, to be a fishwife’s argument.’ He went on to express surprise that Havel co-initiated the libel suit. ‘Well,’ the smooth-tongued Železný added, ‘husbands don’t always have it easy.’ A few months later, after an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed sum was reached, TV Nova apologized to the Havels on its evening news programme.
437 Interview with Olga Stankovicová, Prague, 10 November 1998.
438 ‘Politologům se nelíbi Havlovo příliš emotivní vystupování’, MF Dnes (Prague), 9 December 1997, p. 3. Later evidence of his continuing depression is found in the leaked memorandum, ‘Mym podřízeným’ (’To my subordinates’), reprinted in Lidové noviny (Prague), 10 October 1998, p. 27. The memorandum outlines a media strategy (‘I want to be seen less and heard less’), and begins with a confession: ‘This weekend I was in one of the deepest depressions in a long time. It was probably evident at our meeting, or in my introduction. If I put anyone in a bad mood, I apologize for that. On the other hand, I tell myself that it doesn’t do any harm if my colleagues occasionally have a peek at the sombre spirit of their boss.’
439 Cited in The Prague Post (Prague), 8-14 January 1997, p. 1.
440 The Brno newspaper Moravsko slezský den (21 November 1997) reported that, although 65.7 per cent of Czechs still ‘trusted’ Havel, his popularity had dropped 20 per cent during 1997 alone.
441 Joseph Brodsky to Václav Havel, printed in the New York Review of Books, 41, 4 (1994), p. 30
442 Christopher Hitchens, ‘Havel in the Castle’, The Nation (Washington, DC), 16 December 1996, p. 8.
443 Immanuel Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf (Berlin, 1795), second supplement, in Immanuel Kants Werke, ed. Ernst Cassirer, volume 6 (Berlin, 1914); Friedrich Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung, oder Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophirt (Leipzig, 1889), p. 59.
444 Speech in acceptance of the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, Philadelphia, 4 July 1994.
445 Interview with Alois Strnad, Prague, 28 September 1997.
446 Interview with Paul Wilson, Toronto, 1 June 1998. According to Wilson, Havel rejected any suggestions that he might in future play the kind of public role carved out by the former Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau. ‘I can’t see that I would have as much, or more, influence as a writer than as a president,’ said Havel.
447 William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1.
448 Address in acceptance of an Honorary Degree from Oxford University, Oxford, 22 October 1998, posted at http://www.hrad.cz/president/Havel/speeches/1998/2210_uk.html.
449 Adam Michnik, in a speech to the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (Berlin, 1995).
450 Cited in Jonathan Steele, ‘Crushed-velvet revolutionary’, Guardian (London), 13 March 1999. A similar remark was made in my interview with Palouš, (Prague) 24 September 1997.
451 ‘A Crying Need for Intellectuals’, The New Presence, op. cit., p. 18.
452 Leviathan, op. cit., Part 1, chapter 11.
453 Jan Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, translated by Erazim Kohák (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois, 1996), p. 105.
454 Interview with Antonín Pridal, ‘Z očí do očí’, Česká televize 2, Prague, 1996.
455 Of the eight former presidents of Czechoslovakia, six either stepped down for health reasons (Masaryk [1918-1935]; Beneš [1935-1938; 1941-1946; 1946-1948]; Svoboda [1968-1973; 1973-1975]); or died when in office (Gottwald [1948-1953]; Zápotocký [1953-1957]); or died in prison shortly after being arrested (Hácha [1938-1945]). See Vladimír Kadlec, Podivné konce našich prezidentů (first published in samizdat, Prague, 1989 [1991].
456 Jaroslav Šabata, Sedmkrát Sedm Kruhů (Olomouc, 1997), p. 107.
457 All quotations are from the pre-recorded interview with Havel conducted by Bohumil Klepetko and Jolana Voldánová and transmitted on ČTV 2, 13 June 1998.
458 Interview with Michal Serf, Prague, 2 November 1998.
459 The following quotations are drawn from the interview with Professor Bodner conducted by Marek Wollner, Týden, 31 (27 July 1998), pp. 18, 20.
460 The Prague Post (2-8 September 1998), p. 2.
461 Rytmus ž ivota, 31 (29 July 1998), p. 5; cf. Lidové noviny, 27 July 1998, p. 3. Compare the remark of Miroslav Čerbák, head of the Doctors’ Concilium responsible for treating Havel during this period: ‘He is the type of person who, when he feels a task and duty, comes alive’ (MF Dnes [Prague], 4 December 1997).
462 Homer, Iliad, Book XI, 1, 394.
463 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ, 1957), especially pp. 3–23, 314-450.
464 Lidové noviny, 21 November 1997, p. 3. In a readers’ poll, the same newspaper reported that there were some Czechs who liked what Havel had done for their country, but who were emphatic that ‘the atmosphere of irreplaceability’ enveloping the Castle (atmosféra nenahraditelnosti) was bad for the role of the presidency.
465 See the first-hand account by H. Gordon Skilling, ‘Letters from Prague 1937’, Kosmas, Journal of Czechoslovak and Central European Affairs (London, 1982), p. 71.