Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/080392/0803510.000

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                                                                                INTERVIEW, Page 46

Vaclav Havel

"I Cherish A Certain Hope"


No longer President of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel talks about
his country's breakup, his political future and the importance
of good taste in public affairs

By LANCE MORROW/PRAGUE


    The deepest layer of Prague is spiky, medieval, dark with
coal dust. For years Vaclav Havel could look out from his
dilapidated apartment building, across the fast, shallow Vltava
River, and see the castle on the hill -- Hradcany, the high,
elaborate complex that dominates the city. He could cross the
river by the 14th century Charles Bridge, lined on either side
with beseeching, tormented statuary -- church fathers,
age-blackened saints.

    On top of the medieval lies Prague's socialist layer, the
residue of neglect and cynicism, the peeling paint, the shop
shelves half empty from the day before yesterday when the
Bohemians and Moravians and Slovaks were under occupation -- a
nation landbound and Lenin-bound as well.

    Above all that, quickening the surfaces now, is the newest
thing, a lively entrepreneurial city -- Western glitz and
electronics and hard money flowing in; the platzes swarming with
backpackers; McDonald's opening a second branch, this one on
Wenceslas Square, where the "velvet revolution" transpired in
November 1989. The new McDonald's is in sight of the spot where
Jan Palach set himself on fire for Czechoslovak freedom in 1969,
the spot where Havel laid flowers in 1989 and was arrested for
the deed. Now a deadpan sword swallower resembling Leonid
Brezhnev draws a crowd of American children, and punkers with
spiked Mohawk haircuts wander the medieval lanes.

    On street corners the old communist empire is for sale:
young Czechs peddle Soviet army garrison caps and belts and
military watches, and even, forlornly, old Communist Party
identification papers, with someone's staring photograph and
years of official stamps layered like multiple exposures.

    Peeping out everywhere is Franz Kafka's haunted, haunting
face. Kafka is a poster and T-shirt industry. Shining out from
the Central European confectionery window frames and snowflake
Bohemian crystal: the consumptive's black, intelligent eyes. He
is Prague's presiding household god, part of the city's neurotic
Shinto.

    It was Kafka who invented the castle as literature -- the
Prague castle of his novel being the symbolic seat of
mysterious, anonymous power, an effect the Communists had a
genius for. That Havel came to preside over the castle seemed
the Czechoslovaks' graceful, transcendent leap out of the dark,
a sort of miracle -- and an impish historical touch.

    Havel, born in 1935 and raised in a well-to-do bourgeois
family, began as an absurdist playwright in the style of Ionesco
or Pinter or Beckett. An attitude of surrealist paranoia turned
out to be the right moral optic through which to see the
Communist world clearly, and Havel had keen eyesight.
Constricted as a playwright, he became a dissident. Imprisoned
as a dissident, he became a symbol. Communism was brutal and
stupid and corrupt. Havel was Czechoslovakia with brains -- the
country's better self, its idealist, its moral philosopher, the
visionary of "living in truth.'' When the Communist state fell
away in November 1989, it made some giddy, noble sense to
install Havel as the first President of Czechoslovakia's new
age.

    When Havel resigned the mostly ceremonial office last
week, the ground beneath him was shifting. Czechoslovakia may
soon split in two -- the Slovaks in the eastern half of the
country breaking off to form an independent state, the Bohemians
and Moravians in the Czech lands to the west organizing a
faster-moving, more entrepreneurial state that might soon
integrate with the European Community. In some ways a breakup
would be logical. The Slovaks and those in the Czech lands were
pieces of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire knit together in 1918,
but they have deep differences of background, outlook and
economic metabolism. Many Slovaks want to seize the moment to
have their own republic, even though independence would cut them
off from some $300 million in annual subsidies from the
Czechoslovak federal government. Many Czechs react to the
prospect of losing the Slovaks by thinking 1) How sad and 2) Why
not? A breakup might cause anxieties among the 600,000 ethnic
Hungarians who live in Slovakia but would not result in anything
like the savage violence in the Balkans. The greatest danger to
the Czechs is that a breakup might cause outside investors to
pull back some of the billions of dollars now heading through
the pipeline toward Czech projects.

    Some Czechs believe that Havel is too idealistic for
politics. But his resignation may prove to be the shrewdest move
in the game. He may now help invent a new Czech constitution and
then become the first President of the new Czech state, with
powers greater than those he has just abandoned.

    In any case, Havel's moral importance transcends Central
European politics. His ideas aim toward formation of a kind of
global civil society. The breakup of Czechoslovakia might be a
sort of rehearsal for the problems involved in larger re
arrangements of the world order. Havel asserts values not often
advanced in world politics -- courtesy, good taste,
intelligence, decency and, above all, responsibility. He
asserted them against the Communist regime. Anyone who thinks
Havel's values are charming but useless in the real world must
consider that the Communists are now gone.


    Q. Are you relieved to have resigned?

    A. I am quite relieved, almost happy actually, because
always when I accomplish something or make an important
decision, spurring others to act rather than reacting only to
what is happening around me, it gives me a feeling of inner
freedom and self-confirmation. And everyone needs such
self-confirmation. It is one of the paradoxes of my life that
I am experiencing such a creative feeling at the moment of my
resignation.


    Q. Some have said the possible breakup of Czechoslovakia
would be a tragedy, some say it is inevitable, some say it is
a good thing.

    A. If we become two stable democratic states, then the
fact that we are not a large state is not a tragedy. If the
breakup of our common state should lead to inner instability,
chaos, poverty and suffering, then it would start to become a
tragedy. The fact in itself that two states shall emerge out of
one is not a tragedy. I do not feel any sentimental ties to the
Czechoslovak state. I do not place the highest value on the
state, but rather on man and humanity.


    Q. Is there a possibility of ethnic violence?

    A. In the entire postcommunist world there exists an
imminent danger of nationalistic and ethnic conflict. In some
cases nations were not able to search freely for and find their
own identity and form of statehood and gain their independence
for tens or even hundreds of years. We cannot be surprised that
now, when the straitjacket of communism has been torn off, all
the countries wish to establish their independence and
self-determination.

    A second reason is that for many years the individual
citizen was not used to living in freedom. The people got used
to a certain structure of guarantees, albeit unpleasant ones.
The people are shocked by the freedoms to a certain extent.
They are looking for replacement guarantees. And the guarantees
of one's own tribe seem to be the most accessible.

    On the other hand, Czechoslovakia is not so serious as the
cases of other countries, such as those in the Balkans. We have
no tradition of hostility and national conflict. The Czechs and
Slovaks have always lived in friendship; they have never fought
against each other.


    Q. You have had an unusual career, from playwright to
dissident leader to President. Are you going to return to
writing full time, or will you stay in politics?

    A. When I consider my life as a whole, it has been very
adventurous. But it was not because I am an adventurer. I am a
very calm and order-loving person, with a bourgeois background.
I like things to be constant. In this respect I am even a little
conservative. If someone had a bald spot 20 years ago, I would
like him to have that same bald spot now.

    Despite these characteristics, fate and history and my
almost chronic sense of inner responsibility have made my life
full of paradoxes and absurdities. I was always active in
public life as a citizen. This is something I considered an
integral part of my mission as a writer. This is something I
will have to continue doing. Knowing myself, I won't disappear
from public life. It may become another absurdity and paradox
of my life that I could be the President of two different states
within a short period of time.


    Q. You use a vocabulary that is not heard very often in
American politics. You talk of decency, good taste,
intelligence.

    A. When I became President, I tried to bring a more
personal dimension back to politics, because this world is
endangered by a large "anonymization." We are becoming integral
parts of mega-machineries, which move with their own
uncontrollable inertia. I tried to accentuate the spiritual and
ethical dimensions of political decision-making.

    In this I even foresee a way of saving the world from all
global threats to mankind. I do think that no more technical
tricks or systemic measures could be created capable of
preventing these threats. Certain changes of the human mentality
are necessary in order to deepen the feeling of global
responsibility. The renewal of global responsibility is not
thinkable without a certain respect for a higher principle above
my own personal existence.


    Q. Three years ago, a U.S. State Department analyst named
Francis Fukuyama published an article titled "The End of
History?"He said the contest with communism was over and that
democratic pluralism has won. If capitalism and a market economy
are the way the world is going, are those things compatible with
the civil society as you describe it?

    A. I for sure do not think that history ended with the
fall of communism. The world is full of problems that are more
serious than ever before. It would be a mistake to blame
communism for all of civilization's problems and to think that
its fall would make them disappear. The recent explosion of
unrest in Los Angeles proved that even in a country with
democracy and an advanced economy, conflicts may erupt to which
the system has no answers.


    Q. As we approach the year 2000, are you optimistic or
pessimistic about the future?

    A. I cherish a certain hope in me, hope as a state of
spirit -- a state of spirit without which I cannot imagine
living or doing something. I can hardly imagine living without
hope. As for the future of the world: there is a colorful
spectrum of possibilities, from the worst to the best. What will
happen, I do not know. Hope forces me to believe that those
better alternatives will prevail, and above all it forces me to
do something to make them happen.


    Q. I have been fascinated by a phrase that you have used
in your writings and that translates into English as good
taste. I wonder what you mean by that?

    A. I have found that good taste, oddly enough, plays an
important role in politics. Why is it like that? The most
probable reason is that good taste is a visible manifestation
of human sensibility toward the world, environment, people. I
came to this castle and to other governmental residences
inherited from communism, and I was confronted with tasteless
furniture and many tasteless pictures. Only then did I realize
how closely the bad taste of former rulers was connected with
their bad way of ruling. I also realized how important good
taste was for politics. During political talks, the feeling of
how and when to convey something, of how long to speak, whether
to interrupt or not, the degree of attention, how to address the
public, forms to be used not to offend someone's dignity and on
the other hand to say what has to be said, all these play a
major role. All such political behavior relates to good taste
in a broader sense. What I really have in mind is something more
than just knowing which tie to choose to match a particular
shirt.


    Q. Do people respond when you appeal to them on the basis
of atmosphere, good manners, good taste?

    A. I feel that this appeal of mine is finding a positive
echo, but a very indirect one. Here, as in every democracy, we
witness all the aspirations, ambitions, battles and hunger for
power. My position seems to be the one of a dreamer who mumbles
something about ideals, completely untouched by real life,
whereas politics takes a different course. But this is a very
banal view. In reality it seems to me that my constant
repetition of certain things planted seeds. I do see this right
now, in the moment when my federal presidency is over. From
various sides I seem to be hearing voices that call for exactly
such a person who would be constantly reminding the society of
the values I stand for. These voices also maintain that such a
person should be leading this state. These voices paradoxically
enough seem to be coming from those who have never listened to
my advice, and who blocked my nomination for the presidency.
What happened cannot be undone, but the seeds I planted in the
subconsciousness of the people are there acting indirectly.