Vaclav Havel

Dissident Czech playwright Vaclav Havel spoke to Michel Bongiovanni on June 30, 1989, six months before he would be elected president following the overthrow of the communist government in the Velvet Revolution. In the interview, which took place “in semi-clandestine conditions” in Havel’s Prague home, Havel discussed his hopes for a free Czechoslovakia and the power of writers and intellectuals in changing society.

Asked how the role of intellectuals was different in the Communist Bloc than in the West, Havel first explained that totalitarianism destroyed political debate and culture. He continued, “But a strange thing happened. Politics, chased out of the door, came back in through the window. It suddenly invaded the whole spectrum of social life. Secretly, everything took on political significance: a concert, a mass, a fair … In such circumstances, the writer’s word acquires an extraordinary aura. Especially if he strives to tell the truth, without fear of the problems he is bringing down on his own head, if he ceases to be the docile interpreter of authority. Why is the writer so important? Because the tool with which he works is language, which calls a spade a spade, which asks questions. It is the quintessential tool of culture.”

Additional Interviews With Vaclav Havel
Then-President Havel was interviewed in October 1993 by Andrzej Jagodzinski of Polish newspaper Gazeta wyborcza. They talked primarily about personal issues; Havel touched on his childhood, his tastes in music, food and drink, and his need for women in his life.

Havel discussed “post-Soviet politics and the rise of Western democracy in his homeland” in a Sept. 13, 2000, appearance on “Charlie Rose.”

To learn more about Vaclav Havel, read his profile on findingDulcinea.