Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright who wove theatre into politics to peacefully bring down communism in Czechoslovakia and become a hero of the epic struggle that ended the Cold War, died yesterday. He was 75.
Havel died at his weekend house in the northern Czech Republic.
Havel was his country's first democratically elected president after the non-violent Velvet Revolution that ended four decades of repression by a regime he ridiculed as "Absurdistan".
As president, he oversaw the country's bumpy transition to democracy and a free-market economy, as well its peaceful 1993 break-up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
A former chain-smoker, Havel had a history of chronic respiratory problems dating back to his years in communist jails.
Havel left office in 2003, 10 years after Czechoslovakia broke up and just months before both nations joined the European Union. He was credited with laying the groundwork that brought his Czech Republic into the 27-nation bloc, and was president when it joined NATO in 1999.
Shy and bookish, with wispy moustache and unkempt hair, Havel came to symbolise the power of the people to peacefully overcome totalitarian rule.
"Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred," he once famously said.
A peacenik whose heroes included rockers such as Frank Zappa, he never quite shed his flower-child past, and often signed his name with a small heart as a flourish.
Havel first made a name for himself after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion that crushed the Prague Spring reforms of Alexander Dubcek. His plays were banned, but he continued to write, producing a series of underground essays that stand with the work of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov.
Born on October 5, 1936, in Prague, the child of a wealthy family which had its assets confiscated by the communists in 1948, Havel was denied a formal education, eventually earning a degree at night school.
His political activism began in earnest in January 1977, when he co-authored the human rights manifesto Charter 77, which drew wide attention in the West.
Havel was detained many times and spent four years in jails.
In August 1988, thousands of young people marched through central Prague, yelling Havel's name and that of the playwright's hero, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk. Havel's arrest in January 1989 at another street protest and his trial generated anger at home and abroad. Pressure for change was so strong that the communists released him again in May.
That year, communism began to collapse across Eastern Europe, and in November the Berlin Wall fell. Eight days later, communist police brutally broke up a demonstration by thousands of Prague students. It was the signal that Havel and his country had been waiting for. Within 48 hours, a broad new opposition movement was founded, and a day later, hundreds of thousands of Czechs and Slovaks took to the streets.
In three weeks, communist rule was broken, and on December 29, 1989, Havel was elected Czechoslovakia's president by the country's still-communist parliament. Three days later, he told the nation in a televised New Year's address: "Out of gifted and sovereign people, the regime made us little screws in a monstrously big, rattling and stinking machine."
In 1996, after his first wife died of cancer, he lost a third of his right lung during surgery to remove a tumor. He gave up smoking and married Dagmar Veskrnova, an actress almost 20 years his junior.
Havel died at his weekend house in the northern Czech Republic.
Havel was his country's first democratically elected president after the non-violent Velvet Revolution that ended four decades of repression by a regime he ridiculed as "Absurdistan".As president, he oversaw the country's bumpy transition to democracy and a free-market economy, as well its peaceful 1993 break-up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
A former chain-smoker, Havel had a history of chronic respiratory problems dating back to his years in communist jails.
Havel left office in 2003, 10 years after Czechoslovakia broke up and just months before both nations joined the European Union. He was credited with laying the groundwork that brought his Czech Republic into the 27-nation bloc, and was president when it joined NATO in 1999.
Shy and bookish, with wispy moustache and unkempt hair, Havel came to symbolise the power of the people to peacefully overcome totalitarian rule.
"Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred," he once famously said.
A peacenik whose heroes included rockers such as Frank Zappa, he never quite shed his flower-child past, and often signed his name with a small heart as a flourish.
Havel first made a name for himself after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion that crushed the Prague Spring reforms of Alexander Dubcek. His plays were banned, but he continued to write, producing a series of underground essays that stand with the work of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov.
Born on October 5, 1936, in Prague, the child of a wealthy family which had its assets confiscated by the communists in 1948, Havel was denied a formal education, eventually earning a degree at night school.
His political activism began in earnest in January 1977, when he co-authored the human rights manifesto Charter 77, which drew wide attention in the West.
Havel was detained many times and spent four years in jails.
In August 1988, thousands of young people marched through central Prague, yelling Havel's name and that of the playwright's hero, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk. Havel's arrest in January 1989 at another street protest and his trial generated anger at home and abroad. Pressure for change was so strong that the communists released him again in May.
That year, communism began to collapse across Eastern Europe, and in November the Berlin Wall fell. Eight days later, communist police brutally broke up a demonstration by thousands of Prague students. It was the signal that Havel and his country had been waiting for. Within 48 hours, a broad new opposition movement was founded, and a day later, hundreds of thousands of Czechs and Slovaks took to the streets.
In three weeks, communist rule was broken, and on December 29, 1989, Havel was elected Czechoslovakia's president by the country's still-communist parliament. Three days later, he told the nation in a televised New Year's address: "Out of gifted and sovereign people, the regime made us little screws in a monstrously big, rattling and stinking machine."
In 1996, after his first wife died of cancer, he lost a third of his right lung during surgery to remove a tumor. He gave up smoking and married Dagmar Veskrnova, an actress almost 20 years his junior.
