Source: HRO.org (info), 19/12/11 

  

• Human Rights Defenders 
• Education
• Moscow Region and Moscow

We have lost Václav Havel. We have lost a playwright, essayist, political writer, whose name has become – for the Czech Republic, Russia and all of Eastern Europe – a symbol of intellectual resistance to dictatorship, a symbol of the ultimate victory of free reason and free expression over state lies and violence. 

We have lost a man whose entire oeuvre and public activities embodied the spirit of the Czech nation and Czech culture – the spirit of commonsense wisdom and wise irony. Nothing was more alien to Havel than false theatricality, particularly that of a ' father of the nation', of a tribune and a prophet; than the self-satisfied theatricality of dogmatic self-righteousness, whatever its source. [Read more]