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December 18th, 2011 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Thousands of mostly young people marched through central Prague, yelling Havel’s name and that of the playwright’s hero, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, the philosopher who was Czechoslovakia’s first president after it was founded in 1918.
Havel’s arrest in January 1989 at another street protest and his subsequent trial generated anger at home and abroad. Pressure for change was so strong that the communists released him again in May.
That fall, communism began to collapse across Eastern Europe, and in November the Berlin Wall fell. Eight days later, communist police brutally broke up a demonstration by thousands of Prague students.
It was the signal that Havel and his country had awaited. Within 48 hours, a broad new opposition movement was founded, and a day later, hundreds of thousands of Czechs and Slovaks took to the streets.
In three heady weeks, communist rule was broken. Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones arrived just as the Soviet army was leaving. Posters in Prague proclaimed: “The tanks are rolling out — the Stones are rolling in.”
On Dec. 29, 1989, Havel was elected Czechoslovakia’s president by the country’s still-communist parliament. Three days later, he told the nation in a televised New Year’s address: “Out of gifted and sovereign people, the regime made us little screws in a monstrously big, rattling and stinking machine.”
Moral voice
Although he continued to be regarded a moral voice as he decried the shortcomings of his society under democracy, he eventually bent to the dictates of convention and power. His watchwords — “what the heart thinks, the tongue speaks” — had to be modified for day-to-day politics.
And post-revolutionary life contained many challenges.
In July 1992, it became clear that the Czechoslovak federation was heading for a split. Considering it a personal failure, Havel resigned as president.
But he remained popular and was elected president of the new Czech Republic uncontested.
He was small, but his presence and wit could fill a room. Even late in life, he retained a certain impishness and boyish grin, shifting easily from philosophy to jokes or plain old Prague gossip.
Slideshow: Year in Review: Newsmaker Farewells 2011 (on this page)
In December 1996, just 11 months after his first wife, Olga Havlova, died of cancer, he lost a third of his right lung during surgery to remove a half-inch malignant tumor.
He gave up smoking and married Dagmar Veskrnova, a dashing actress almost 20 years his junior.
Holding a post of immense prestige but little power, Havel’s image suffered in the latter years as his people discovered the difficulties of transforming their society in the post-communist era.
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AFP – Getty Images file
His attempts to reconcile rival politicians were considered by many as unconstitutional intrusions, and his pleas for political leaders to build a “civic society” based on respect, tolerance and individual responsibility went largely unanswered.
Media criticism, once unthinkable, became unrelenting. Serious newspapers questioned his political visions; tabloids focused mainly on his private life and his flashy second wife.
Havel himself acknowledged that his handling of domestic issues never matched his flair for foreign affairs. But when the Czech Republic joined NATO in March 1999, and the European Union in May 2004, his dreams came true.
“I can’t stop rejoicing that I live in this time and can participate in it,” Havel exulted.
Early in 2008, Havel returned to his first love: the stage. He published a new play, “Leaving,” about the struggles of a leader on his way out of office, and the work gained critical acclaim.
Theater, he told the AP, was once again his major interest.
“My return to the stage was not easy,” he said. “It’s not a common thing for someone to be involved in theater, become a president, and then go back.”
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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