VÁCLAV HAVEL will rightly be remembered as one of the two greatest Czech politicians of the last 100 years (the other being Thomas Garrigue Masaryk). It is virtually impossible to offer any rational, unemotional, objective evaluation of his life and work. I shall not even attempt to do that.
I was in close contact with Václav Havel when I worked for 20 years in the UK for the Czechoslovak opposition and rights movement Charter 77. Havel's open letters and essays, including his famous Power of the Powerless,which I helped to publicise in the West, were smuggled among other documents to my agency, Palach Press, by couriers.
In 1985 I helped to distribute Havel's Anatomy of a Reticenceat a European Nuclear Disarmament peace conference in Amsterdam, and facilitated a dialogue between the European Nuclear Disarmament group and Charter 77, which included Havel.
In March of that year I was asked by Charter 77 to make available to western leaders, governments and institutions the Prague Appeal, in which Havel and other signatories urged the West to help bring down the Iron Curtain and end the “undemocratic legacy of WW2”, starting with the reunification of Germany and the rebirth of a democratic and free Europe.
Several of the top European leaders I subsequently met expressed their moral support for Havel’s courage, but perceived the Prague Appeal as partly an attempt to undermine detente and stability in Europe, and extremely naive.
In early 1989 I was asked by a BBC journalist which of the Czech opposition leaders did I trust the most not to become corrupted by power should the communist regime ever fall. Without hesitation I named three men, including Václav Havel.
Shortly after the November 1989 “velvet revolution” I listened with admiration to Havel’s first major presidential speech in which he described his vision of a peaceful world without any military pacts, a vision of a unified and integrated free Europe and a vision of his prosperous and democratic country where there would be no unemployment and people would enjoy social justice.
Later, as a president of both Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, he amended some of his views and became more realistic and pragmatic.
He also made some painful compromises, for example signing the law on “lustration” while being aware it might not help to clean the civil service of former communist secret service agents, and might also hurt some innocent people whose names were found in the secret service files, having drawn the attention of the agents.
I have to admit that when I was foreign minister I clashed with then president Havel over the Czech-Greek Peace memorandum in which, together with Jorgos Papandreou, we tried to halt the bombardment of former Yugoslavia and bring peace to Kosovo while respecting a UN resolution on the integrity of the country. Four years later I again disagreed, as the president of the UN general assembly, with Havel’s support for the invasion of Iraq.
Havel made a firm decision to closely attach his country to the West and, therefore, to always support the US, to which he professed his “gratitude”. I understood these emotions, but found such a stance difficult to support in all cases.
However, Havel will always remain in my memory as a very courageous man, a fervent supporter of human rights everywhere, a politician who championed an integrated Europe that was democratic and environmentally responsible. And, above all, I will remember him as a very decent human being.
Several weeks ago, on October 8th, I met Havel at a celebration of the 70th birthday of our mutual friend, human rights activist
Petr Uhl. Havel asked me to join him at his table, and inquired sincerely about my wellbeing. He was frail and ill and only whispered.
During our conversation I reminded myself that this man is one of the greatest Europeans, one who fully deserves the unquestionable respect of both his country and the world.
We all owe him a lot.
Jan Kavan founded the Palach Press Agency that served as the main press agency for the human rights movement Charter 77. He was minister for foreign affairs of the Czech Republic between 1998 and 2002 and deputy prime minister between 1999 and 2002. He also served as president of the United Nations general assembly between 2002 and 2003