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| vaclav havel living in truth: Václav Havel, Or, Living in Truth Václav Havel, 1987 |
| vaclav havel living in truth: The Power of the Powerless (Routledge Revivals) Vaclav Havel, 2009-11-05 Books of great political insight and novelty always outlive their time of birth and this reissued work, initially published in 1985, is no exception. Written shortly after the formation of Charter 77, the essays in this collection are among the most original and compelling pieces of political writing to have emerged from central and Eastern Europe during the whole of the post-war period. Václav Havel’s essay provides the title for the book. It was read by all the contributors who in turn responded to the many questions which Havel raises about the potential power of the powerless. The essays explain the anti-democratic features and limits of Soviet-type totalitarian systems of power. They discuss such concepts as ideology, democracy, civil liberty, law and the state from a perspective which is radically different from that of people living in liberal western democracies. The authors also discuss the prospects for democratic change under totalitarian conditions. Steven Lukes’ introduction provides an invaluable political and historical context for these writings. The authors represent a very broad spectrum of democratic opinion, including liberal, conservative and socialist. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Vaclav Havel, Living in Truth Vaclav Havel, 1989 |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Havel Michael Zantovsky, 2014-11-04 The “definitive biography” of the poet and political dissident who became the last president of Czechoslovakia—and first president of the Czech Republic (Walter Isaacson). This portrait of Vaclav Havel, iconoclast and intellectual, renowned playwright turned political dissident, president of a united then divided nation, and dedicated human rights activist, is written by his former press secretary, advisor, and longtime friend—and recounts the turbulent twentieth-century era through which he prevailed. Havel’s lifelong perspective as an outsider began with his privileged childhood in Prague and his family’s blacklisted status following the Communist coup of 1948. This feeling of being outcast fueled his career as an essayist and a dramatist writing absurdist plays as social commentary. His involvement during the Prague Spring and his leadership of Charter 77, his unflagging belief in the power of the powerless, and his galvanizing personality catapulted Havel into a pivotal role as the leader of the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Although Havel was a courageous visionary, he was also a man of great contradictions, wracked with doubt and self-criticism. But he always remained true to himself. This “smart and exciting” biography is “both inspiring and filled with lessons for our time” (Walter Isaacson). “Havel was one of the most important intellectual-troublemaking statesmen of his time—a nonconformist, determined to live in truth, who questioned the system, his countrymen and himself constantly. No one is better suited than Michael Zantovsky to describe, interpret, and analyze this moral giant . . . A brilliantly informed intellectual and political history.” —Madeleine Albright “Entertaining, intimate, and moving . . . Zantovsky’s voice—that of a natural storyteller with an eye for the memorable anecdote, a mischievous wit, an easy intelligence, and keen sense of balance and fairness—is so engaging.” —Paul Wilson, The New York Review of Books |
| vaclav havel living in truth: The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patocka to Havel Aviezer Tucker, 2000-08-15 Winner of the Foundations of Political Theory First Book Prize Honorable Mention, 2001Theory meets practice in The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patocka to Havel, a critical study of the philosophy and political practice of the Czech dissident movement Charter 77. Aviezer Tucker examines how the political philosophy of Jan Patocka (1907-1977), founder of Charter 77, influenced the thinking and political leadership of Vaclav Havel as dissident and president. The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patocka to Havel is the first serious treatment of Havel as philosopher and Patocka as a political thinker. Through the Charter 77 dissident movement in Czechoslovakia, opponents of communism based their civil struggle for human rights on philosophic foundations, and members of the Charter 77 later led the Velvet Revolution. After Patocka's self-sacrifice in 1977, Vaclav Havel emerged a strong philosophical and political force, and he continued to apply Patocka's philosophy in order to understand the human condition under late communism and the meaning of dissidence. However, the political/philosophical orientation of the Charter 77 movement failed to provide President Havel with an adequate basis for comprehending and responding to the extraordinary political and economic problems of the postcommunist period. In his discussion of Havel's presidency and the eventual corruption of the Velvet Revolution, Tucker demonstrates that the weaknesses in Charter 77 member's understanding of modernity, which did not matter while they were dissidents, seriously harmed their ability to function in a modern democratic system. Within this context, Tucker also examines Havel's recent attempt to topple the democratic but corrupt government in 1997-1998. The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patocka to Havel will be of interest to students of philosophy and politics, scholars and students of Slavic studies, and historians, as well as anyone fascinated by the nature of dissidence. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Letters to Olga Václav Havel, Paul Wilson, 1990 Vaclav Havel is one of the most important European writers of our time. In 1979 he was sentenced to four and a half years of hard labour for his involvement in the Czech human rights movement, Charter 77. In prison he was allowed to write to his wife, Olga, once a week. He used the opportunity for profound reflections, on theatre, society and philosophy. These letters form a remarkable document, and a work of lasting value.'From Havel, we learn that the true heroes of our time are those who stay the course.' Bruce Chatwin |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Vaclav Havel, Living in Truth Vaclav Havel, 1989 |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Disturbing the Peace Václav Havel, 1990 On the eve of his fiftieth birthday, Vaclav Havel looks back on his life in the theatre, the literary politics of his early years and the stagnation that followed the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Havel also discusses his part in his country's struggle to restore morality and civic responsibility to public life and the price he has paid for this. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: The Garden Party and Other Plays Václav Havel, 1993 Gathered together here for the first time are seven plays that span Havel's career from his early days at the Theater of the Balustrade through the Prague Spring, Charter 77, and the repeated imprisonments that made Havel's name into a rallying cry and propelled him to the leadership of his country. They include The Garden Party, The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, Mistake, the Vanek trilogy of Audience, Unveiling, and Protest, and the first fully corrected English version of The Memorandum--the play that won Havel the Obie for Best Foreign Play in 1968. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: The Greengrocer and His TV Paulina Bren, 2010 The Greengrocer and His TV offers a new cultural history of communism from the Prague Spring to the Velvet Revolution that reveals how state-endorsed ideologies were played out on television, particularly through soap opera-like serials. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Vaclav Havel John Keane, 2000-10-02 Vaclav Havel is revered as one of the 20th-century's great playwrights, dissidents, and honest champions of democracy. In this study, John Keane reveals a Havel so far unseen, dramatising the key moments of joy, misery, triumph and tragedy on which his life has turned. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Summer Meditations Václav Havel, 1992 Eighteen months after becoming Czechoslovakia's president, Vaclav Havel reflects candidly on his first experience as a democratic politician. He also discusses issues which have become increasingly urgent throughout the former communist bloc, such as national rivalries and economic transition. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Confronting Totalitarian Minds: Jan Patočka on Politics and Dissidence Aspen E. Brinton, 2021-05-01 The Czech philosopher Jan Patocka not only witnessed some of the most turbulent politics of twentieth-century Central Europe, but shaped his philosophy in response to that tumult. One of the last students of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, he inspired Václav Havel and other dissidents who confronted the Communist regime before 1989, as well as being actively involved in authoring and enacting Charter 77. He died in 1977 from medical complications resulting from interrogations of the secret police. Confronting Totalitarian Minds examines his legacy along with several contemporary applications of his ideas about dissidence, solidarity, and the human being’s existential confrontation with unjust politics. Expanding the current possibilities of comparative political theory, the author puts Patocka’s ideas about dissidence, citizen mobilization, and civic responsibility into conversation with notable world historical figures like Mahatma Gandhi, Vaclav Havel, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and other contemporary activists. In adding a fresh voice to contemporary conversations on transcending injustice, Confronting Totalitarian Minds seeks to educate a wider audience about this philosopher’s continued relevance to political dissidents across the world. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Private Truths, Public Lies Timur Kuran, 1997-09-30 Preface Living a Lie The Significance of Preference Falsification Private and Public Preferences Private Opinion, Public Opinion The Dynamics of Public Opinion Institutional Sources of Preference Falsification Inhibiting Change Collective Conservatism The Obstinacy of Communism The Ominous Perseverance of the Caste System The Unwanted Spread of Affirmative Action Distorting Knowledge Public Discourse and Private Knowledge The Unthinkable and the Unthought The Caste Ethic of Submission The Blind Spots of Communism The Unfading Specter of White Racism Generating Surprise Unforeseen Political Revolutions The Fall of Communism and Other Sudden Overturns The Hidden Complexities of Social Evolution From Slavery to Affirmative Action Preference Falsification and Social Analysis Notes Index. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Vaclav Havel Václav Havel, 1987-03-01 |
| vaclav havel living in truth: The Politics of Small Things Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, 2006-04-01 Political change doesn’t always begin with a bang; it often starts with just a whisper. From the discussions around kitchen tables that led to the dismantling of the Soviet bloc to the more recent emergence of Internet initiatives like MoveOn.org and Redeem the Vote that are revolutionizing the American political landscape, consequential political life develops in small spaces where dialogue generates political power. In The Politics of Small Things, Jeffrey Goldfarb provides an innovative way for understanding politics, a way of appreciating the significance of politics at the micro level by comparatively analyzing key turning points and institutions in recent history. He presents a sociology of human interactions that lead from small to large: dissent around the old Soviet bloc; life on the streets in Warsaw, Prague, and Bucharest in 1989; the network of terror that spawned 9/11; and the religious and Internet mobilizations that transformed the 2004 presidential election, to name a few. In such pivotal moments, he masterfully shows, political autonomy can be generated, presenting alternatives to the big politics of the global stage and the dominant narratives of terrorism, antiterrorism, and globalization. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: These Are Strange Times, My Dear Wendy Willis, 2019-02-05 In these pointed and wide–ranging essays, Wendy Willis explores everything from personal resistance to the rise of political podcasts, civic loneliness to the exploitation of personal data, public outrage to the opioid crisis—all with a poet's gift for finding the sacred in the mundane, a hope in the dark. One of the country's sharpest observers of politics, art, and the American spirit, Willis returns often to the demanding question posed by Czech writer, activist, and politician Václav Havel: What does it mean to live in truth? Her view is honed by her place as a poet, as a mother, and, when necessary, as an activist. Together, the essays in These Are Strange Times, My Dear work within that largely unmapped place where the heartbreaks and uncertainties of one's inner life brush up against the cruelties and responsibilities of politics and government and our daily lives. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Between Two Fires Joshua Yaffa, 2020-01-14 WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE • NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • “Unforgettable . . . a book about Putin’s Russia that is unlike any other.”—Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain From a Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker, a groundbreaking portrait of modern Russia and the inner struggles of the people who sustain Vladimir Putin’s rule ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—NPR, Kirkus Reviews In this rich and novelistic tour of contemporary Russia, Joshua Yaffa introduces readers to some of the country’s most remarkable figures—from politicians and entrepreneurs to artists and historians—who have built their careers and constructed their identities in the shadow of the Putin system. Torn between their own ambitions and the omnipresent demands of the state, each walks an individual path of compromise. Some muster cunning and cynicism to extract all manner of benefits and privileges from those in power. Others, finding themselves to be less adept, are left broken and demoralized. What binds them together is the tangled web of dilemmas and contradictions they face. Between Two Fires chronicles the lives of a number of strivers who understand that their dreams are best—or only—realized through varying degrees of cooperation with the Russian government. With sensitivity and depth, Yaffa profiles the director of the country’s main television channel, an Orthodox priest at war with the church hierarchy, a Chechen humanitarian who turns a blind eye to persecutions, and many others. The result is an intimate and probing portrait of a nation that is much discussed yet little understood. By showing how citizens shape their lives around the demands of a capricious and frequently repressive state—as often by choice as under threat of force—Yaffa offers urgent lessons about the true nature of modern authoritarianism. Praise for Between Two Fires “A deep and revealing portrait of life inside Vladimir Putin’s Russia. . . . Yaffa mines a rich vein, describing his subjects’ moral compromises and often ingenious ways of engaging a crooked bureaucracy to show how the Kremlin sustains its authoritarianism.”—The New York Times Book Review “Few journalists have penetrated so deep and with so much nuance into the moral ambiguities of Russia. If you want insight into the deeper distortions the Kremlin causes in people’s psyches this book is invaluable.”—Peter Pomerantsev, author of Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible “A stunning chronicle of Putin’s new Russia . . . It celebrates the vitality of the Russian people even as it explores the compromises and accommodations that they must make. . . . This embrace of contradictions is what makes Between Two Fires such a poignant and poetic book.”—Alex Gibney, Air Mail |
| vaclav havel living in truth: No Enemies, No Hatred Xiaobo Liu, Eugene Perry Link, Tienchi Martin-Liao, Xia Liu, 2012-01-02 When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on December 10, 2010, its recipient, Liu Xiaobo, was in Jinzhou Prison, serving an eleven-year sentence for what Beijing called “incitement to subvert state power.” In Oslo, actress Liv Ullmann read a long statement the activist had prepared for his 2009 trial. It read in part: “I stand by the convictions I expressed in my ‘June Second Hunger Strike Declaration’ twenty years ago—I have no enemies and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who indicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my enemies.” That statement is one of the pieces in this book, which includes writings spanning two decades, providing insight into all aspects of Chinese life. These works not only chronicle a leading dissident’s struggle against tyranny but enrich the record of universal longing for freedom and dignity. Liu speaks pragmatically, yet with deep-seated passion, about peasant land disputes, the Han Chinese in Tibet, child slavery, the CCP’s Olympic strategy, the Internet in China, the contemporary craze for Confucius, and the Tiananmen massacre. Also presented are poems written for his wife, Liu Xia, public documents, and a foreword by Václav Havel. This collection is an aid to reflection for Western readers who might take for granted the values Liu has dedicated his life to achieving for his homeland. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Václav Havel James F. Pontuso, 2004 More than any other public figure, VOclav Havel has reflected on the opportunities and dilemmas facing humankind as a result of the collapse of Communism. In VOclav Havel: Civic Responsibility in the Postmodern Age, James F. Pontuso argues that Havel's life as a dissident and political leader, his political philosophy, and his plays must be understood as connected to one another. Pontuso skillfully explores these connections and explains Havel's prescriptions for political life. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: The Art of the Impossible Václav Havel, 1998 Havel has never played by the rules of the game -- not as a dissident imprisoned under Czechoslovakia's communist regime and not as president of the Czech Republic ... The Art of the Impossible is no ordinary, collection of political speeches. Better to think of it as a collection of Vaclav Havel's conversations with himself, Which he has graciously, if tentatively, decided to share with the rest of us ... Like his American predecessor Thomas Jefferson. Vaclav Havel is a politician with the soul of a writer and a writer with the savvy of a politician ... The speech Havel delivered un 1991 after receiving the Sonning Prize in Copenhagen is a model of applied moral philosophy and practical wisdom that should be required reading for anyone who holds political office (or just works for someone who does) ... Like the samizdat smuggled to the East during the Cold War, Havel's speeches have the power to sustain hope and inspire action even when the prospects of success seem dim. Read them. Pass them on. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: On Tyranny Timothy Snyder, 2017-02-28 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “bracing” (Vox) guide for surviving and resisting America’s turn towards authoritarianism, from “a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and present” (The New York Times) “Timothy Snyder reasons with unparalleled clarity, throwing the past and future into sharp relief. He has written the rare kind of book that can be read in one sitting but will keep you coming back to help regain your bearings.”—Masha Gessen The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Even As We Breathe Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, 2020-09-08 Nineteen-year-old Cowney Sequoyah yearns to escape his hometown of Cherokee, North Carolina, in the heart of the Smoky Mountains. When a summer job at Asheville's luxurious Grove Park Inn and Resort brings him one step closer to escaping the hills that both cradle and suffocate him, he sees it as an opportunity. The experience introduces him to the beautiful and enigmatic Essie Stamper—a young Cherokee woman who is also working at the inn and dreaming of a better life. With World War II raging in Europe, the resort is the temporary home of Axis diplomats and their families, who are being held as prisoners of war. A secret room becomes a place where Cowney and Essie can escape the white world of the inn and imagine their futures free of the shadows of their families' pasts. Outside of this refuge, however, racism and prejudice are never far behind, and when the daughter of one of the residents goes missing, Cowney finds himself accused of abduction and murder. Even As We Breathe invokes the elements of bone, blood, and flesh as Cowney navigates difficult social, cultural, and ethnic divides. Betrayed by the friends he trusted, he begins to unearth deeper mysteries as he works to prove his innocence and clear his name. This richly written debut novel explores the immutable nature of the human spirit and the idea that physical existence, with all its strife and injustice, will not be humanity's lasting legacy. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Plato and Europe Jan Pato?ka, 2002 The Czech philosopher Jan Patocka (1907-1977) is widely recognized as the most influential thinker to come from postwar Eastern Europe. This book presents his most mature ideas about the history of Western philosophy. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Plagued by Fire Paul Hendrickson, 2020-09-22 Frank Lloyd Wright has long been known as a rank egotist who held in contempt almost everything aside from his own genius. Harder to detect, but no less real, is a Wright who fully understood, and suffered from, the choices he made. This is the Wright whom Paul Hendrickson reveals in this masterful biography: the Wright who was haunted by his father, about whom he told the greatest lie of his life. And this, we see, is the Wright of many other neglected aspects of his story: his close, and perhaps romantic, relationship with friend and early mentor Cecil Corwin; the eerie, unmistakable role of fires in his life; the connection between the 1921 Black Wall Street massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the murder of his mistress, her two children, and four others at his beloved Wisconsin home. In showing us Wright’s facades along with their cracks, Hendrickson helps us form a fresh, deep, and more human understanding of the man. With prodigious research, unique vision, and his ability to make sense of a life in ways at once unexpected, poetic, and undeniably brilliant, he has given us the defining book on Wright. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Live Not by Lies Rod Dreher, 2020-09-29 The New York Times bestselling author of The Benedict Option draws on the wisdom of Christian survivors of Soviet persecution to warn American Christians of approaching dangers. For years, émigrés from the former Soviet bloc have been telling Rod Dreher they see telltale signs of soft totalitarianism cropping up in America--something more Brave New World than Nineteen Eighty-Four. Identity politics are beginning to encroach on every aspect of life. Civil liberties are increasingly seen as a threat to safety. Progressives marginalize conservative, traditional Christians, and other dissenters. Technology and consumerism hasten the possibility of a corporate surveillance state. And the pandemic, having put millions out of work, leaves our country especially vulnerable to demagogic manipulation. In Live Not By Lies, Dreher amplifies the alarm sounded by the brave men and women who fought totalitarianism. He explains how the totalitarianism facing us today is based less on overt violence and more on psychological manipulation. He tells the stories of modern-day dissidents--clergy, laity, martyrs, and confessors from the Soviet Union and the captive nations of Europe--who offer practical advice for how to identify and resist totalitarianism in our time. Following the model offered by a prophetic World War II-era pastor who prepared believers in his Eastern European to endure the coming of communism, Live Not By Lies teaches American Christians a method for resistance: • SEE: Acknowledge the reality of the situation. • JUDGE: Assess reality in the light of what we as Christians know to be true. • ACT: Take action to protect truth. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said that one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming totalitarianism can't happen in their country. Many American Christians are making that mistake today, sleepwalking through the erosion of our freedoms. Live Not By Lies will wake them and equip them for the long resistance. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Postnational Identity Martin Joseph Matuštík, 1993 Contradictory interpretations have been applied to history-making events that led to the end of the cold war: Václav Havel, using Kierkegaardian terms, called the demise of totalitarianism in east-central Europe an existential revolution' (i.e. an awakening of human responsibility, spirit, and reason), while others hailed it as a victory for the New World Order. Regardless of one's point of view, however, it is clear that the global landscape has been dramatically altered. Where once the competition between capitalism and communism provided a basis for establishing political- and self-identity, today, the destructive forces of nationalist identity and religious and secular fundamentalism are filling the void. In his timely and significant new work, Martin J. Matu¿tík synthesizes the critical social theory of J rgen Habermas with the existentialism of Havel and Søren Kierkegaard to present an alternative to the conceptualization of identity based on nationalism that is stoking the flames of civil wars in Europe and racial and ethnic tensions in eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and the United States. In so doing, he reinvigorates critical social theory, and points the way toward a multicultural, post-national identity and a democracy capable of resisting both imperial consensus and xenophobic backlash. Offering the most extensive examination of Habermas's and Kierkegaard's critiques of nationalist identity available, Postnational Identity dramatically confronts the traditional view of existential philosophy as antisocial and uncritical. This volume shows how Kierkegaardian theory and practice of radically honest communication allows us to rethink the existential in terms of Habermas's communicative action, and vice versa. As the author explains the foundations of his work in the Preface: Critical theory and existential philosophy, brought together in this book, engender two forms of suspicion of the present age. The critical theorist, such as J rgen Habermas, unmasks the forms in which social and cultural life become systematically distorted by the imperatives of political power and economic gain. The existential critic, like Søren Kierkegaard and Václav Havel, is suspicious of the various ways in which individuals deceive themselves or other people. This study aims to integrate Kierkegaard's and Havel's existential critique of motives informing human identity formation with Habermas's critique of the colonialization of fragmented, anomic modern life by systems of power and money....My argument is that existential critique and social critique complement each other and overcome their respective limitations. Organized into three distinct sections, the book begins with a study of individual and group identity in Habermas's work on communicative ethics. This section draws on Habermas's readings of Kant, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Mead, and Durkheim. Part Two uses Kierkegaard's existential ethics to broaden Habermas's notion of identity. The argument proceeds from the performative character of existential individuality to Kierkegaard's theory and practice of communication, and, finally, to the regulative community ideal projected in his critique of the present age. In the book's final section, the author addresses the question of identity to the nationalist strife of the present age. Overall, the book sets forth the argument that a move from fundamentalist constructions of identity to postnational, open, and multicultural identity is a critical ideal on which both the existential and socio-political suspicion of the present age converge. Postnational Identity is addressed to the three multicultural audiences that gave it shape: western Europe, eastern Europe, and the United States. One of the first works to treat seriously the existential thought of Václav Havel, the book will hold enormous appeal for students and professionals involved in existential philosophy, critical theory, philosophy, and, more generally, political science, literary theory, communications, and cultural studies. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: To the Castle and Back Vaclav Havel, 2011-03-11 An astonishingly candid memoir from the acclaimed, dissident playwright elected President after the dramatic Czechoslovakian Velvet Revolution — one of the most respected political figures of our time. As writer and statesman, Václav Havel played an essential part in the profound changes that occurred in Central Europe in the last decades of the twentieth century. In this most intimate memoir, he writes about his transition from outspoken dissident and political prisoner to a player on the international stage in 1989 as newly elected president of Czechoslovakia after the ousting of the Soviet Union, and, in l993, as president of the newly formed Czech Republic. Havel gives full rein to his impassioned stance against the devastation wrought by communism, but the scope of his concern in this engrossing memoir extends far beyond the circumstances he faced in his own country. The book is full of anecdotes of his interactions with world figures: offering a peace pipe to Mikhail Gorbachev, meditating with the Dali Lama, confessing to Pope John Paul II and partying with Bill and Hilary Clinton. Havel shares his thoughts on the future of the European Union and the role of national identity in today’s world. He explains why he has come to change his mind about the war in Iraq, and he discusses the political and personal reverberations he faces because of his initial support of the invasion. He writes with equal intelligence and candour about subjects as diverse as the arrogance of western power politics, the death of his first wife and his own battle with lung cancer. Woven through are internal memos he wrote during his presidency that take us behind the scenes of the Prague Castle – the government’s seat of power – showing the internal workings of the office and revealing Havel’s mission to act as his country’s conscience, and even, at times, its chief social convenor. Written with characteristic eloquence, wit and well-honed irony combined with an unfailing sense of wonder at the course his life has taken, To the Castle and Back is a revelation of one of the most important political figures of our time. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Bloodlands Timothy Snyder, 2012-10-02 From the author of the international bestseller On Tyranny, the definitive history of Hitler’s and Stalin’s politics of mass killing, explaining why Ukraine has been at the center of Western history for the last century. Americans call the Second World War “the Good War.” But before it even began, America’s ally Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens—and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, German and Soviet killing sites fell behind the Iron Curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single story. With a new afterword addressing the relevance of these events to the contemporary decline of democracy, Bloodlands is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history and its meaning today. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Body, Community, Language, World Jan Patočka, 1998 Body, Community, Language, World, here made available in English for the first time is Patocka's presentation of phenomenology as a living tradition - as a philosophical heritage that requires to be rethought and redirected in light of possibilities that it has itself uncovered. Jan Patocka lived for most of his adult life in Communist Czechoslovakia where he was at times banned from publishing or teaching. Mentor of Vaclav Havel, Patocka defied the regime as one of the spokespersons for Charta 77, and died in 1977, following two months of police interrogation. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Václav Havel Václav Havel, 1990 Gathers essays by the Czech playwright, and includes writings by other authors in his honor. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: American Quaker War Tax Resistance David M. Gross, 2011-10-20 This book illuminates the evolution of Quaker war tax resistance in America, as told by those who resisted and those who debated the limits of the Quaker peace testimony where it applied to taxpaying. Among the writers featured in this documentary history are Isaac Sharpless, Thomas Story, William Penn, James Logan, Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, John Churchman, James Pemberton, Joshua Evans, Anthony Benezet, Job Scott, Warner Mifflin, Timothy Davis, James Mott, Isaac Grey, Samuel Allinson, Moses Brown, Stephen B. Weeks, Rufus Hall, Gouverneur Morris, Elias Hicks, Joshua Maule, and Cyrus G. Pringle. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge Peter B. Kaufman, 2021-02-24 How do we create a universe of truthful and verifiable information, available to everyone? In The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge, MIT Open Learning’s Peter B. Kaufman describes the powerful forces that have purposely crippled our efforts to share knowledge widely and freely. Popes and their inquisitors, emperors and their hangmen, commissars and their secret police—throughout history, all have sought to stanch the free flow of information. Kaufman writes of times when the Bible could not be translated—you’d be burned for trying; when dictionaries and encyclopedias were forbidden; when literature and science and history books were trashed and pulped—sometimes along with their authors; and when efforts to develop public television and radio networks were quashed by private industry. In the 21st century, the enemies of free thought have taken on new and different guises—giant corporate behemoths, sprawling national security agencies, gutted regulatory commissions. Bereft of any real moral compass or sense of social responsibility, their work to surveil and control us are no less nefarious than their 16th- and 18th- and 20th- century predecessors. They are all part of what Kaufman calls the Monsterverse. The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge maps out the opportunities to mobilize for the fight ahead of us. With the Internet and other means of media production and distribution—video especially—at hand, knowledge institutions like universities, libraries, museums, and archives have a special responsibility now to counter misinformation, disinformation, and fake news—and especially efforts to control the free flow of information. A film and video producer and former book publisher, Kaufman begins to draft a new social contract for our networked video age. He draws his inspiration from those who fought tooth and nail against earlier incarnations of the Monsterverse—including William Tyndale in the 16th century; Denis Diderot in the 18th; untold numbers of Soviet and Central and East European dissidents in the 20th—many of whom paid the ultimate price. Their successors? Advocates of free knowledge like Aaron Swartz, of free software like Richard Stallman, of an enlightened public television and radio network like James Killian, of a freer Internet like Tim Berners-Lee, of fuller rights and freedoms like Edward Snowden. All have been striving to secure for us a better world, marked by the right balance between state, society, and private gain. The concluding section of the book, its largest piece, builds on their work, drawing up a progressive agenda for how today’s free thinkers can band together now to fight and win. With everything shut and everyone going online, The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge is a rousing call to action that expands the definition of what it means to be a citizen in the 21st century. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Diaries George Orwell, 2012-08-20 A major literary event—the long-awaited publication of George Orwell's diaries, chronicling the events that inspired his greatest works. This groundbreaking volume, never before published in the United States, at last introduces the interior life of George Orwell, the writer who defined twentieth-century political thought. Written as individual books throughout his career, the eleven surviving diaries collected here record Orwell’s youthful travels among miners and itinerant laborers, the fearsome rise of totalitarianism, the horrific drama of World War II, and the feverish composition of his great masterpieces Animal Farm and 1984 (which have now sold more copies than any two books by any other twentieth-century author). Personal entries cover the tragic death of his first wife and Orwell’s own decline as he battled tuberculosis. Exhibiting great brilliance of prose and composition, these treasured dispatches, edited by the world’s leading Orwell scholar, exhibit “the seeds of famous passages to come” (New Statesman) and amount to a volume as penetrating as the autobiography he would never write. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Charter 77 and Human Rights in Czechoslovakia H. Gordon Skilling, 2025-04-30 First published in 1981, Charter 77 and Human Rights in Czechoslovakia covers the existence of Charter 77 from 1977 down to the end of 1980. The Charter movement was a significant phenomenon in the history of Czechoslovakia and of world communism, and Charter 77 was symbolic of the courage, the spirit of freedom, and human rights in an invaded Czechoslovakia. The book is based on samizdat materials which circulated in type written form within Czechoslovakia and were transmitted abroad at considerable risk and expense. Divided into two section – it deals with the origins of the Charter; its signatories and supporters; its purposes and methods; and its reception at home and abroad; and provides an extensive account of the clauses and documents of Charter 77. This book will be beneficial to students and researchers of international relations, European history, political history, European studies, international politics and human rights. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Living the Truth Keith Ablow, 2008-04-09 For anyone stuck in a bad relationship, for anyone trapped in a job that's unfulfilling, for anyone who drinks too much or uses food as a drug, for anyone whose lifelong dreams have fallen by the wayside-here's help. Renowned psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow offers surprising and effective new strategies for turning the pain of the past into the power of the future. Drawing on more than 15 years of clinical experience, he presents case studies that reveal how ignoring painful memories can negatively affect every aspect of our lives. Acknowledging that examining the past can be daunting, he presents ideas and exercises that are as comforting and rewarding as they are redemptive. Through Ablow's storytelling skills, empathetic voice, and straight-up advice, the experience of reading this book becomes the first step to a brilliant life. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Largo Desolato Václav Havel, 1987 All life in a police state is interesting, probably corrupt and potentially subversive as portrayed in this absurdist but seemingly autobiographical play by Czech playwright Vaclav Havel. As in Phoenix, to cite an example, police don't care about guilt, innocence, justice or mercy. If anyone is accused of a crime, they want a conviction. In Havel's play, Professor Leopold Nettles is charged with disturbing the intellectual peace. Only in a police state could anyone invent such a wide-ranging crime. In Phoenix, conviction means a fine. In Havel's play, a conviction may mean an indeterminate sentence in semi-starved misery in a distant gulag. Once suspected, Leopold knows he's guilty in the eyes of the state. The play portrays a variety of people who visit him, proud that he speaks up in defiance of the authorities - - - but unwilling to join him in his stand for intellectual freedom. Leopold, like Havel for much of his life, is utterly alone. But who are the well-wishers who applaud his dissidence? Are they friends, or secret police agents as provocateurs? Two police agents who visit offer a clever means to avoid prosecution; in effect, just agree to our falsehoods and all charges will go away. Really? A trap? Are the police undermining the government they serve? How can anyone trust anything? Such is the nature of 'Largo Desolato' and life in a police state. --Theodore A. Rushton at Amazon.com. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Despite The State: Why India Lets Its People Down And How They Cope M. Rajshekhar, About the Book A LUCID, NECESSARY ACCOUNT OF HOW DRASTICALLY THE INDIAN STATE FAILS ITS CITIZENS The story of democratic failure is usually read at the level of the nation, while the primary bulwarks of democratic functioning—the states—get overlooked. This is a tale of India’s states, of why they build schools but do not staff them with teachers; favour a handful of companies so much that others slip into losses; wage water wars with their neighbours while allowing rampant sand mining and groundwater extraction; harness citizens’ right to vote but brutally crack down on their right to dissent. Reporting from six states over thirty-three months, award-winning investigative journalist M. Rajshekhar delivers a necessary account of a deep crisis that has gone largely unexamined. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: The Memorandum Václav Havel, 1980 The Memorandum is a remarkably witty assault on the madness of efficiency peculiar to total bureaucracy. In a large office, and unknown to the Managing Director, a new language called Ptydepe is installed as the official means of inter-office communication. |
| vaclav havel living in truth: Losing Reality Robert Jay Lifton, 2019-10-15 A definitive account of the psychology of zealotry, from a National Book Award winner and a leading authority on the nature of cults, political absolutism, and mind control In this unique and timely volume, Robert Jay Lifton, the National Book Award-winning psychiatrist, historian, and public intellectual proposes a radical idea: that the psychological relationship between extremist political movements and fanatical religious cults may be much closer than anyone thought. Exploring the most extreme manifestations of human zealotry, Lifton highlights an array of leaders--from Mao to Hitler to the Japanese apocalyptic cult leader Shoko Asahara to Donald Trump--who have sought the control of human minds and the ownership of reality. Lifton has spent decades exploring psychological extremism. His pioneering concept of the Eight Deadly Sins of ideological totalism--originally devised to identify brainwashing (or thought reform) in political movements--has been widely quoted in writings about cults, and embraced by members and former members of religious cults seeking to understand their experiences. In this book, Lifton weaves together some of his finest work with extensive new commentary to provide vital understanding of mental predators, their assaults on truth, and our efforts to regain reality. |
Václav - Wikipedia
Václav (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvaːtslaf]) or rarely Vácslav is a Czech male given name. It is among the most common Czech names. The Latinized form of the name is Wenceslaus and the Polish …
Meaning, origin and history of the name Václav
Apr 23, 2024 · Saint Václav (known as Wenceslas or Wenceslaus in English) was a 10th-century Duke of Bohemia murdered by his brother. He is the patron saint of the Czech Republic. This was …
Vaclav : Meaning and Origin of First Name | Search Family ...
Born in the 10th century, Vaclav was a respected ruler, renowned for his fair governance, benevolence, and pursuit of Christianity. Tragically, his life was prematurely cut short when he …
The meaning and history of the name Vaclav - Venere
The name Vaclav encapsulates a rich tapestry of history, culture, and linguistic evolution. From its origins denoting “greater glory” to its association with prominent historical figures, the name has …
Vaclav - Name Meaning and Origin
The name "Vaclav" is of Slavic origin and is derived from the elements "va-" meaning "great" or "more" and "slav" meaning "glory" or "fame." Therefore, the name Vaclav can be interpreted to …
Vaclav - Meaning of Vaclav, What does Vaclav mean?
Vaclav is used chiefly in Czech and its origin is Slavonic. Vaclav is a variant of the name Wenceslas (English). See also the related category czech. Vaclav is not often used as a baby boy name. It is …
Vaclav: meaning, origin, and significance explained
Vaclav is a strong and noble name of Slavic origin, typically given to baby boys. The name Vaclav carries a deep and meaningful history, embodying the essence of “More Glory” in its translation. …
Vaclav Name Meaning, Personality & Popularity – Full Breakdown
Aug 17, 2024 · The name Vaclav has Slavic origins and is derived from the name Vaclav, meaning "greater glory" or "more glory". It is a popular name in Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland. …
Václav - Name Meaning, Origin, Popularity, and Related Names
1) Wenceslaus I was the Duke of Bohemia from 921 until his assassination in 935, purportedly in a plot by his brother, Boleslav the Cruel.
Svatý Václav – Wikipedie
Svatý Václav (asi 907 – 28. září 935, příp. 929 [1]; staroslověnsky Vęceslavъ, latinsky Venceslaus, německy Wenzel von Böhmen) byl český kníže a světec, který je hlavním patronem českého …
Václav - Wikipedia
Václav (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvaːtslaf]) or rarely Vácslav is a Czech male given name. It is …
Meaning, origin and history of the name …
Apr 23, 2024 · Saint Václav (known as Wenceslas or Wenceslaus in English) was a 10th-century Duke of …
Vaclav : Meaning and Origin of First Nam…
Born in the 10th century, Vaclav was a respected ruler, renowned for his fair governance, …
The meaning and history of the name …
The name Vaclav encapsulates a rich tapestry of history, culture, and linguistic evolution. From …
Vaclav - Name Meaning and Origin
The name "Vaclav" is of Slavic origin and is derived from the elements "va-" meaning "great" or …
