Hello Hivers and Book Clubbers,
It's high time for another book review! Once again we delve into the realm of non-fiction. Specifically, this time it'll be a biography about Vaclav Havel. When browsing books at a local store I came upon this one, and while I knew about Havel's existence, shall we say, I did not know anything about his life story.
The original book was released in 1991 in by Czech writer Eda Kriseova. It quickly got translated into several other languages, including Dutch, of which I now own this 1992 print.
Writing style
Let's first talk about how the writer did her job. In this case, Kriseova herself was a convinced anti-communist, and involved in the Czechoslovak anti-communist circles since the 60s. She clearly seems an admirer of Havel, due to sympathizing with his cause. The book is also released right after Havel becomes president, so maybe it is somewhat in the 'honeymoon phase' of Havel's political career (more on that later).
Kriseova knows Havel and his circle of friends personally, and is thus able to get a lot of eyewitness-accounts, which is quite necessary for a story that was repressed and censored by the communist officials in government and media. Kriseova also tends to the somewhat opaque and philosophical, which is unusual for a biography. Most biography's are a more clear play-by-play of what the subject does, his achievements etc. Here, it clearly shows that the book is chiefly for a Czech audience, with some events in Czechoslovak history that you're just assumed to know. That can be tough for foreigners reading the book in translations, but it's not too bad.
Background
One could say that the fall of the Habsburgs in 1918 was the genesis of Havel's career, because it was the birth of Czechoslovakia as a nation. And quite the dysfunctional one at that: it could not be considered a nation-state. There were three main ethnic groups: the Czechs, the Slovaks and the Sudeten-Germans. It was this last group that caused the Munich Conference, in which National Socialist Germany demanded the incorporation of the lands where the Sudeten-Germans lived (Sudetenland). In the end, the whole Czech state got swallowed up, to the dismay of the Czechs. We all know the Germans did not win in the end, and with it, the Czechoslovak state returned.
What was new was the presence of Stalin, and communism. Czechoslovakia got incorporated into the Eastern Bloc and Warsaw Pact, and got introduced top-down to the communist way of life.
Onto Havel himself
Here is a good place to start with Havel himself: born in 1936 to an upper-class family (his grandfather was a big name in culture and arts, his father an engineer), the family quickly became a victim to the redistribution-schemes of the communist party in Czechoslovakia. The family soon had to scrape to get by, like most did there at the time. It also limited Havel's academic pursuits: because he was from a 'bourgeois' family, he was not allowed to go to university. He wanted to study in the arts, but this was not possible.
Instead he became more self-taught, and did writing both within the arts as a playwright, and outside of it as a more political writer. Both were a dangerous thing to do: the arts were noticeably regulated and censored from both Prague and Moscow, and Havel's pressure on the government to reduce censorship and unban certain Czech writers got him onto the radar of the communist authorities in the 1950's as a young man.
Communist repression got worse after 1968, and Havel ended up in jail three times in the 1970s, the last time lasting several years. He continued writing in prison, and was seen as one of the main movers of anti-communist activity in the country. The trial for his imprisonments was quite the farce: almost no one was allowed in, and the proceedings were very weakly substantiated. It was a fait-accompli, however well Havel was defended.
He would be in and out of prison in the whole of the 1970s and 1980s. In the meanwhile, the Soviet dam began to burst, and in 1989 the curtain (both literally and figuratively) fell in many parts of the Eastern Bloc: the Berlin Wall came down, revolution in Romania, and in Czechoslovakia the leaders of the Communist Party found it necessary to start talks with the opposition, with Havel at its head. Havel is described as a somewhat reluctant politician, who also did not wish for the presidency that he got later.
To wrap things up
It's a remarkable feat: a writer/playwright becoming a reluctant president of a country. Yet, Kriseova posits that he was able to put into words what many felt at the time. He would remain president of Czechoslovakia for about three years: not because his leadership would be ended, but because Czechoslovakia split apart on 1 january 1993. National feelings arose where communism left, and so the Slovaks decided to go their own way. Havel would remain president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. He would die in 2011, age 75, leaving a lasting impression on the Czechs until this day.
I can heartily recommend this biography to anyone interested in history and politics. As I said, it is translated in several languages including English, and available on the internet for sale. The book proper contains about 220 pages, so it's a middle-sized read which won't take too long. I hope you've enjoyed reading, and feel free to comment or ask question. Discussion is always appreciated and welcomed. Until the next one,
-Pieter Nijmeijer
(Top image of book cover: my own)
