Vaclav Havel Used His Art to Help Effect Politcal Changes

By Richard Amada on Dec 19, 2011 | In General

Former Czech President Vaclav Havel died December 18, 2011, leaving behind the legacy of a dissident artist who eventually rose to the top post of his nation's post-communist government.  Mr. Havel was a playwright who wrote plays that parodied the communist regime in which he lived, and, for some time his works were banned in his own country.  His critical outspokenness also put him at odds with the law of the time and landed him in jail repeatedly.  (No First Amendment counterpart to lean on in Czechoslovakia back then.)  But his willingness to publicly buck the system made him his countrymen's choice for their first president once the "Velvet Revolution" took place in 1989.  He left office in 2003.

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