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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?