// essays //
Winter 2006
Politics and Prose: Vaclav Havel Examined
Ariel Pollock
Over the twenty one years that the Soviet Union exercised its authoritarian, communist rule in Czechoslovakia, a world of underground art and performance grew and flourished. Artists and intellectuals used their crafts as methods of political dissidence, creating and covertly showcasing art that went against the prescribed dictates of the regime. Vaclav Havel was one of the leading artists of this underground. Born into a wealthy family in Prague, Havel was raised in an environment of dissent from the beginning of his life. Because of his family's ties to the bourgeoisie, the Czechoslovakian communist government, which preceded the Soviet regime, disallowed him from receiving any formal education beyond his required schooling. Instead, Havel participated in an informal group that allowed young writers barred from higher education to share their work and learn from each other. The group served as a sounding board for artistic and political thought, and was a precursor to the real involvement of many of its members in political dissidence.
After the Soviet takeover of Czechoslovakia, Havel was banned as a writer, a move which led him to join together with other banned artists. They began to write and produce plays covertly, often from Havel's farmhouse hidden away in the Krkonose Mountains. Havel's plays became synonymous with political activism and dissidence. In his essay, "The Power of the Powerless," he writes that the artist is driven by a desire to live "within the truth." This concept, he seems to say, is also the driving force behind the artist's involvement in politics.
This idea of "living within the truth" is best understood within the historical context of Havel's Czechoslovakia, during the time when he functioned as an artistic and intellectual leader for the underground movement. In 1968, after a massive decline in the Czechoslovakian economy, the "Prague Spring" political movement was born. In April of that year, Alexander Dubcek, the new head of the Communist Party, promised a program of liberalizations that included freedom of the press and the possibility of introducing multi-party government to the Communist country. With this window of freedom cracked open, popular pressure rose in favor of the reforms, manifesting itself in anti-Communist writings and new political parties and organizations. But the Communist government was unwilling to reform. Elements in the government resisted reform and the Soviet army invaded Czechoslovakia in August to curb the tide of liberalization. A new leader of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party soon rose who was interested in "normalization," not reform. Normalization, a policy focused on reemphasizing firm party rule and allegiance to the socialist bloc, was the policy of the Czechoslovakian government from then until its collapse. The Prague Spring was a short-lived period of civic hope and opportunity.
During that period and even before, members of the intelligentsia protested the more conservative and oppressive elements of their government and sought to implement reforms. At the Czechoslovakian Writers Congress in 1967, for example, many speakers emphasized the importance of reform because of the threat to their freedom of speech. The endeavor to liberalize the government was short-lived, though, due to the invasion of the Soviet Union and the reinstitution of an oppressive communist government. Another movement against oppressive government was Charter 77, which became a major force opposing the policy of normalization. Charter 77 began with a manifesto signed by hundreds of Czechoslovakian citizens who criticized the government for not living up to the human rights promises it made in various documents, including its own constitution, the Helsinki Accords, and various United Nations covenants. Though the manifesto attempted to make clear that Charter 77 was not an organization—which would have been illegal under Czechoslovakian law—the government cracked down on the signatories nonetheless, through dismissal from work, denial of education, revocation of citizenship, imprisonment, and other forms of oppression. One of the signatories and major players in the general dissident movement—and, therefore, a victim of the crackdown—was Havel.
Twenty-one years after the Prague Spring and more than a decade after Charter 77, Havel and other key dissidents led the bloodless anti-Soviet revolt known as the Velvet Revolution, forcing the Soviet government to leave the country. The result of the Velvet Revolution was the formation of a new, democratic government by leaders like Havel, intellectuals who stepped up as dissidents against the Soviet Union during the dark period of its reign in Czechoslovakia.
In this context, we can understand Havel's belief that "living within the truth" can be expressed through political activity as well as through the creation of art. The Soviet regime in Czechoslovakia during Havel's time limited the free expression that was vital to the intelligentsia. As such, Havel's initial political involvement was an intellectual's mission to reclaim basic freedoms and human rights. The transition from art to politics, though, is hardly seamless or obvious. Milan Kundera, author of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and a contemporary of Havel, ultimately arrived at the conclusion that it was essential to keep distance from politics. Though he was active in dissent during the Prague Spring, Kundera left Czechoslovakia for France in 1975 and refused to allow his books to be translated from French into Czech until after the Velvet Revolution. His involvement in the Prague Spring demonstrates that at one point, Kundera, like Havel, felt inspired to action by the Soviet regime's stifling of free expression. But, unlike Havel, he later identified himself strictly as an artist and not as a political activist.
The role of the artist as a natural politician is questioned by other members of the intelligentsia across cultures and time periods. Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish dissident and recent Nobel Laureate, was brought to trial by the Turkish government in 2005 because of statements he made during an interview for the Swiss publication Das Magazin. In the interview, he stated, "Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody dares to talk about it." Under Turkish law, which forbids any "explicit insult" of the Turkish government, he was subject to prosecution and a possible jail sentence. Due to a technicality of the law, the charges against him were eventually dropped, but the wound left by his foray into the political realm is still fresh. The topic of artists as political figures was discussed in a recent panel by Pamuk, who has moved to the U.S. and has become a visiting professor at Columbia. He expressed a view that artists are inherently bad politicians because they are unable to acquiesce to public opinion. "Snow is my first and last political novel," he said, "Why? The previous generation of Turkish writers, who were more radical and politically committed, with a sense of political agenda, who tried to combine their political agenda with their art, failed. Art and citizenship are not necessarily compatible. Good citizens do not make good artists most of the time. Bad citizens produce good artists; artists tend to be egoists and are more successful when they care only about their art and ignore the other citizens." According to such a view, an artist's concern will always lie self-interestedly in his or her art. At most, an artist may feel motivated to cry out against a corrupt regime, as Pamuk did against Turkey, but it would never result in any sustained political activity.
Of course, the likelihood of intellectuals becoming politicians depends upon the particular circumstances. In contemporary American society, for instance, intellectuals do not play the same role as they do in European societies. In an interview with Columbia History Professor Bradley Abrams, I was asked to name the most important public intellectual in America today. After I sat and fidgeted for an uncomfortably long period of time, Professor Abrams responded by saying, "See? That's what I mean. We [in America] don't have a tradition of having public intellectuals in the same way that European countries do; neither really does Britain. It's just not an Anglo-Saxon thing."
Czechoslovakia, however, has a strong history of intellectuals' involvement in politics, starting from the 1968 Prague Spring and continuing on. The Soviet invasion, which crushed any hope for reforms within the government itself, catalyzed a rise of intellectuals as strong political figures in the eyes of the public. In Czechoslovakia, as in other eastern European countries, the Soviet Union imposed its authoritarian, communist practices, and did not leave room for individual politicians to take leadership roles. Because of this, intellectuals were accorded the respect and authority that the populace would have otherwise accorded to the politicians. Abrams described these intellectuals to me as "the voice of the nation, as the conscience of the nation." Robert Porter, author of Milan Kundera- A Voice From Central Europe, describes in the introduction to his book how "the politicians associated with [the Prague Spring] were quickly removed and their policies never fully tested, whereas the writers, artists, and intellectuals created the preliminary atmosphere for 1968, and in large measure have continued to exert influence." The role of the actual politician was short-lived and not nearly as significant to the political climate of "post-totalitarian" Czechoslovakia as the role of the intellectual.
LEFT: Vaclav Havel. RIGHT: Orhan Pamuk.
Naturally, then, the intellectuals, writers, and artists were the ideal candidates to take on formal political roles after the Velvet Revolution, when the first democratic elections for the new government were held. Indeed, an astonishing number of seats went to members of the intelligentsia. This was what Havel envisioned when he spoke of "living within the truth:" people who believed in the concept and actualized it by taking steps toward change and reform.
In his essay "The Power of the Powerless," Havel writes of the truthful spirit of artists as proof of their natural predisposition towards politics and political activism. He references the rock band The Plastic People of the Universe, who were put on trial for their mutinous activities, as an example of people who "wanted no more than to be able to live within the truth...They had been given every opportunity to adapt to the new status quo, to accept the principles of living within a lie and thus to enjoy life undisturbed by the authorities. Yet they decided on a different course." Havel envisions the people who identify with this desire to "live within the truth" uniting to influence the political order.
Pamuk differs from Havel in that his experience has led him to believe that politics can only be the oppressor, forcing everyone to comply with the status quo in order to create a homogeneous and docile society. In this way, politics turns into a despotic vehicle, a mechanism for suppressing free speech and expression. According to Pamuk, primary responsibility of the intellectual or artist is to his creative work, and the truth that is being expressed through that specific medium. This responsibility is incompatible with involvement in politics, as Pamuk sees it.
A seeming weakness of Havel's take on politics is that he does not differentiate between politicians and political activists. As Professor Abrams pointed out to me, the eventual outcome of the Velvet Revolution does not support the idea that artists make natural politicians. Although many intellectuals and artists held public office after the first elections, they did not do well in the second round of elections and many decided not to run again. Abrams points out that although these artists were successful as political activists and dissidents, they were not necessarily fit to govern a nation. "Just because the communists put you in jail for writing doesn't make you a good politician." Eventually, the new political system had allowed for a democratized class of politicians to arise, and the temporary stand-ins were no longer needed.
Though Havel's ideal of artists as politicians was a momentary phenomenon for Czechoslovakia, only realized during the period immediately following the Velvet Revolution, the accomplishments of artists as political dissidents remain impressive. The notion of "living within the truth" remains a relevant challenge as well. In a lecture at Columbia in November, a student asked Havel whether he views himself primarily as an artist or as a politician. Havel responded that he is "a person who enjoys creating work. I enjoy making thing up, creating things, as long as it bears fruit. It is not quite as important to me which area this takes place, so writing plays and working in the theater was a creative work which I really enjoyed, but the same applies to politics." The goal of living creatively, truthfully, and courageously applies not only to the artist and to the politician, but equally to every human being.
After the Soviet takeover of Czechoslovakia, Havel was banned as a writer, a move which led him to join together with other banned artists. They began to write and produce plays covertly, often from Havel's farmhouse hidden away in the Krkonose Mountains. Havel's plays became synonymous with political activism and dissidence. In his essay, "The Power of the Powerless," he writes that the artist is driven by a desire to live "within the truth." This concept, he seems to say, is also the driving force behind the artist's involvement in politics.
This idea of "living within the truth" is best understood within the historical context of Havel's Czechoslovakia, during the time when he functioned as an artistic and intellectual leader for the underground movement. In 1968, after a massive decline in the Czechoslovakian economy, the "Prague Spring" political movement was born. In April of that year, Alexander Dubcek, the new head of the Communist Party, promised a program of liberalizations that included freedom of the press and the possibility of introducing multi-party government to the Communist country. With this window of freedom cracked open, popular pressure rose in favor of the reforms, manifesting itself in anti-Communist writings and new political parties and organizations. But the Communist government was unwilling to reform. Elements in the government resisted reform and the Soviet army invaded Czechoslovakia in August to curb the tide of liberalization. A new leader of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party soon rose who was interested in "normalization," not reform. Normalization, a policy focused on reemphasizing firm party rule and allegiance to the socialist bloc, was the policy of the Czechoslovakian government from then until its collapse. The Prague Spring was a short-lived period of civic hope and opportunity.
During that period and even before, members of the intelligentsia protested the more conservative and oppressive elements of their government and sought to implement reforms. At the Czechoslovakian Writers Congress in 1967, for example, many speakers emphasized the importance of reform because of the threat to their freedom of speech. The endeavor to liberalize the government was short-lived, though, due to the invasion of the Soviet Union and the reinstitution of an oppressive communist government. Another movement against oppressive government was Charter 77, which became a major force opposing the policy of normalization. Charter 77 began with a manifesto signed by hundreds of Czechoslovakian citizens who criticized the government for not living up to the human rights promises it made in various documents, including its own constitution, the Helsinki Accords, and various United Nations covenants. Though the manifesto attempted to make clear that Charter 77 was not an organization—which would have been illegal under Czechoslovakian law—the government cracked down on the signatories nonetheless, through dismissal from work, denial of education, revocation of citizenship, imprisonment, and other forms of oppression. One of the signatories and major players in the general dissident movement—and, therefore, a victim of the crackdown—was Havel.
Twenty-one years after the Prague Spring and more than a decade after Charter 77, Havel and other key dissidents led the bloodless anti-Soviet revolt known as the Velvet Revolution, forcing the Soviet government to leave the country. The result of the Velvet Revolution was the formation of a new, democratic government by leaders like Havel, intellectuals who stepped up as dissidents against the Soviet Union during the dark period of its reign in Czechoslovakia.
In this context, we can understand Havel's belief that "living within the truth" can be expressed through political activity as well as through the creation of art. The Soviet regime in Czechoslovakia during Havel's time limited the free expression that was vital to the intelligentsia. As such, Havel's initial political involvement was an intellectual's mission to reclaim basic freedoms and human rights. The transition from art to politics, though, is hardly seamless or obvious. Milan Kundera, author of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and a contemporary of Havel, ultimately arrived at the conclusion that it was essential to keep distance from politics. Though he was active in dissent during the Prague Spring, Kundera left Czechoslovakia for France in 1975 and refused to allow his books to be translated from French into Czech until after the Velvet Revolution. His involvement in the Prague Spring demonstrates that at one point, Kundera, like Havel, felt inspired to action by the Soviet regime's stifling of free expression. But, unlike Havel, he later identified himself strictly as an artist and not as a political activist.
The role of the artist as a natural politician is questioned by other members of the intelligentsia across cultures and time periods. Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish dissident and recent Nobel Laureate, was brought to trial by the Turkish government in 2005 because of statements he made during an interview for the Swiss publication Das Magazin. In the interview, he stated, "Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody dares to talk about it." Under Turkish law, which forbids any "explicit insult" of the Turkish government, he was subject to prosecution and a possible jail sentence. Due to a technicality of the law, the charges against him were eventually dropped, but the wound left by his foray into the political realm is still fresh. The topic of artists as political figures was discussed in a recent panel by Pamuk, who has moved to the U.S. and has become a visiting professor at Columbia. He expressed a view that artists are inherently bad politicians because they are unable to acquiesce to public opinion. "Snow is my first and last political novel," he said, "Why? The previous generation of Turkish writers, who were more radical and politically committed, with a sense of political agenda, who tried to combine their political agenda with their art, failed. Art and citizenship are not necessarily compatible. Good citizens do not make good artists most of the time. Bad citizens produce good artists; artists tend to be egoists and are more successful when they care only about their art and ignore the other citizens." According to such a view, an artist's concern will always lie self-interestedly in his or her art. At most, an artist may feel motivated to cry out against a corrupt regime, as Pamuk did against Turkey, but it would never result in any sustained political activity.
Of course, the likelihood of intellectuals becoming politicians depends upon the particular circumstances. In contemporary American society, for instance, intellectuals do not play the same role as they do in European societies. In an interview with Columbia History Professor Bradley Abrams, I was asked to name the most important public intellectual in America today. After I sat and fidgeted for an uncomfortably long period of time, Professor Abrams responded by saying, "See? That's what I mean. We [in America] don't have a tradition of having public intellectuals in the same way that European countries do; neither really does Britain. It's just not an Anglo-Saxon thing."
Czechoslovakia, however, has a strong history of intellectuals' involvement in politics, starting from the 1968 Prague Spring and continuing on. The Soviet invasion, which crushed any hope for reforms within the government itself, catalyzed a rise of intellectuals as strong political figures in the eyes of the public. In Czechoslovakia, as in other eastern European countries, the Soviet Union imposed its authoritarian, communist practices, and did not leave room for individual politicians to take leadership roles. Because of this, intellectuals were accorded the respect and authority that the populace would have otherwise accorded to the politicians. Abrams described these intellectuals to me as "the voice of the nation, as the conscience of the nation." Robert Porter, author of Milan Kundera- A Voice From Central Europe, describes in the introduction to his book how "the politicians associated with [the Prague Spring] were quickly removed and their policies never fully tested, whereas the writers, artists, and intellectuals created the preliminary atmosphere for 1968, and in large measure have continued to exert influence." The role of the actual politician was short-lived and not nearly as significant to the political climate of "post-totalitarian" Czechoslovakia as the role of the intellectual.
LEFT: Vaclav Havel. RIGHT: Orhan Pamuk.
Naturally, then, the intellectuals, writers, and artists were the ideal candidates to take on formal political roles after the Velvet Revolution, when the first democratic elections for the new government were held. Indeed, an astonishing number of seats went to members of the intelligentsia. This was what Havel envisioned when he spoke of "living within the truth:" people who believed in the concept and actualized it by taking steps toward change and reform.
In his essay "The Power of the Powerless," Havel writes of the truthful spirit of artists as proof of their natural predisposition towards politics and political activism. He references the rock band The Plastic People of the Universe, who were put on trial for their mutinous activities, as an example of people who "wanted no more than to be able to live within the truth...They had been given every opportunity to adapt to the new status quo, to accept the principles of living within a lie and thus to enjoy life undisturbed by the authorities. Yet they decided on a different course." Havel envisions the people who identify with this desire to "live within the truth" uniting to influence the political order.
Pamuk differs from Havel in that his experience has led him to believe that politics can only be the oppressor, forcing everyone to comply with the status quo in order to create a homogeneous and docile society. In this way, politics turns into a despotic vehicle, a mechanism for suppressing free speech and expression. According to Pamuk, primary responsibility of the intellectual or artist is to his creative work, and the truth that is being expressed through that specific medium. This responsibility is incompatible with involvement in politics, as Pamuk sees it.
A seeming weakness of Havel's take on politics is that he does not differentiate between politicians and political activists. As Professor Abrams pointed out to me, the eventual outcome of the Velvet Revolution does not support the idea that artists make natural politicians. Although many intellectuals and artists held public office after the first elections, they did not do well in the second round of elections and many decided not to run again. Abrams points out that although these artists were successful as political activists and dissidents, they were not necessarily fit to govern a nation. "Just because the communists put you in jail for writing doesn't make you a good politician." Eventually, the new political system had allowed for a democratized class of politicians to arise, and the temporary stand-ins were no longer needed.
Though Havel's ideal of artists as politicians was a momentary phenomenon for Czechoslovakia, only realized during the period immediately following the Velvet Revolution, the accomplishments of artists as political dissidents remain impressive. The notion of "living within the truth" remains a relevant challenge as well. In a lecture at Columbia in November, a student asked Havel whether he views himself primarily as an artist or as a politician. Havel responded that he is "a person who enjoys creating work. I enjoy making thing up, creating things, as long as it bears fruit. It is not quite as important to me which area this takes place, so writing plays and working in the theater was a creative work which I really enjoyed, but the same applies to politics." The goal of living creatively, truthfully, and courageously applies not only to the artist and to the politician, but equally to every human being.
// DOV FRIEDMAN, CC '09, is interested in majoring in History and EALAC.