After the Communist Party had stepped down, its Prime Minister, Ladislav Adamec, sat down with Havel and his friends to negotiate. Adamec had called Havel a "nobody" only weeks before, and so when the two men shook hands the Prime Minister was at a loss as to how to greet his foe: "We haven't met yet, have we?" Zantovsky brilliantly describes the record of these negotiations, which were shrouded in mystery at the time, as "like the transcript of a chess game between a veteran grandmaster and a line-up of enthusiastic amateurs. The professional keeps confusing his opponents by feigning and disguising his true intentions and sacrificing pawns to bolster his position. The amateurs do not see beyond the next move and are condemned to watch their attacks being parried and frustrated. It would have been no contest were it not for the fact that the professional had lost his queen early in the game. And Havel, ever polite, was still able to see through the duplicity of his opponent and stood ready to call his bluff at a critical moment: ‘Let's go to the Castle [meaning to the president] and propose someone who will be more understanding . . .'"
"Havel to the Castle!" The cry went up on Wenceslas Square as soon as the threat of a Communist crackdown had receded. Czechs wanted this most unconventional figure to be their head of state in place of Gustav Husák, the ultimate symbol of repression, who had taken over from Dubček after the Soviet invasion of 1968 and now sat quaking in the Hrad, the castle that dominates the Prague skyline.
There was no secret agreement between Havel and the Communists — Zantovsky quashes the rumours to this effect that have circulated ever since. "What had always distinguished Havel from many of his fellow dissidents was his sense of the possible," writes Zantovsky. He became President by popular acclaim because he had earned it: by spending five years in jail, by keeping alight the Charter 77 movement, by fearlessly satirising the regime in his plays. (Havel was perhaps the only man ever to have deserved both the Nobel Prize for Peace and for Literature. He received neither.) Havel earned his 13 years as head of state by proving that a revolutionary can make the transition to statesman.
"Havel to the Castle!" The cry went up on Wenceslas Square as soon as the threat of a Communist crackdown had receded. Czechs wanted this most unconventional figure to be their head of state in place of Gustav Husák, the ultimate symbol of repression, who had taken over from Dubček after the Soviet invasion of 1968 and now sat quaking in the Hrad, the castle that dominates the Prague skyline.
There was no secret agreement between Havel and the Communists — Zantovsky quashes the rumours to this effect that have circulated ever since. "What had always distinguished Havel from many of his fellow dissidents was his sense of the possible," writes Zantovsky. He became President by popular acclaim because he had earned it: by spending five years in jail, by keeping alight the Charter 77 movement, by fearlessly satirising the regime in his plays. (Havel was perhaps the only man ever to have deserved both the Nobel Prize for Peace and for Literature. He received neither.) Havel earned his 13 years as head of state by proving that a revolutionary can make the transition to statesman.
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