Vaclav Havel: The Czechoslovak President, Playwright, & Philosopher King
I have been writing my dissertation thesis at McGill University on Czechoslovak democracy, as imagined and shaped by the first Czechoslovak President, Masaryk; the second Czechoslovak President, Edvard Benes; and the Czechoslovak President and then Czech President, Vaclav Havel.
So, I thought I would jot down a brief biography for this blog on Havel as well as some of his general ideas about politics and democracy.
Perhaps in the future I’ll devote more energy to this here since I know that many of you are interested in East Central European politics.
So, who was Havel? And why was he so important for democracy in the region?
Havel: A Brief Biography
Born in 1936, Havel was brought up in a relatively affluent, educated, and connected family.
Within two years of being born, the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–38) dissolved as the great European powers signed the Munich Agreement in 1938. By March 1939, German forces occupied Czechoslovakia.
After the War, the Czechoslovakian exiled government returned from London to Prague. As we saw from the previous essay, the government would only last until 1948 when the Communist Party took control of the…
