Václav Havel

How honored I am to know him. This is a totally admirable man. He is a great writer — of poems, essays and, of course, plays. A brave man. A man who would — and did — go to prison for principle.

He turned his pen to politics after the Soviets crushed Czechoslovakia's Prague Spring in 1968, and then, when members of the underground band Plastic People of the Universe were arrested, Václav Havel helped form Charter 77, a protest movement that led to 1989's velvet revolution and, which, eventually, saw him installed as President....

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