Don Quixote of Prague

Who said that Don Quixote is necessarily crazy, urban or rural, a loser in a copper basin instead of a helmet, mistaking windmills for evil wizards? Vaclav Havel, whom we and progressive humanity, fitting into the sparkling ellipse of universal values, lost on December 18, was not at all funny and quite a successful Don Quixote. When he was born in 1936 in Prague, into a wealthy bourgeois family, Czechoslovakia was a cozy and clean European country. And then the horrors of the Munich agreement and the vile Yalta secret protocol fell upon it, which in 1968 doomed the Prague Spring to ruthless suppression by Soviet and other "Warsaw-treaty" tanks with the complete non-interference of the Western powers.

Havel had to live under both Nazi and Soviet occupation, and one can only dream of such an honest and dignified life in dishonorable times. Not a single dissident has ever been able to serve his Fatherland in such a way that dissident glory was drowned in the rays of the presidential one. Czechoslovakia, the free world, and Russian human rights activists have always synchronized their watches with Havel. He was not mistaken, and even in the 60s, when Dubcek dreamed of "socialism with a human face", Havel remained a right-liberal, sober and ironic opponent of all socialisms and communisms in the world. The communist authorities could not stifle his dramatic and journalistic talent.

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When they recently tried to award Putin the Quadriga Prize, Havel's promise to return this award was enough to prevent the Prize from being awarded at all this year.

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Since 1965, Havel has fallen into the clutches of censorship. And after 1968, arrests began, first short, preventive, domestic, and after the signing of the "Charter-77", the manifesto of Czechoslovak intellectuals who decided to cast their European demands on the stone face of the authorities, he was imprisoned for a long time, from 1979 to 1983 . Havel's plays were printed and staged abroad and were banned in Czechoslovakia. But the Prague Don Quixote continued to rush to the totalitarian strongholds. In 1989, he created the "Civil Forum" and raised the curtain of the "velvet revolution" over Czechoslovakia. This refined intellectual, writer, playwright, publicist and prisoner of conscience felt so much intelligence and firmness that both houses of parliament elected him president of the liberated country. He became its last president (1989–1992). First of all, Vaclav Havel declared Czechoslovakia a peaceful country and closed military factories, spitting on the proceeds from the sale of weapons. This was one of the reasons for the departure of Slovakia, but Havel did not flinch. The divorce was soft, elegant, beautiful, without scandals and cries of territorial integrity.

Václav Havel became the first President of the Czech Republic (1993–2003). He encouraged and promoted economic reforms and did not give up on his reformers. He brought the Czech Republic to NATO (1999) and the EU (2004) and firmly and bluntly said that Russia is not yet fit for NATO, that NATO will be the guardian of European security on the borders of Belarus and Ukraine when everything gets better there. It seems that he did not believe that we would get better. He considered the American missile defense system beneficial for Central Europe. His authority was so great that when they recently tried to present the Quadriga Prize to Putin, Havel's promise to return this award was enough to prevent the prize from being awarded at all this year. One must be able to throw himself under four horses when they gallop to the service of the dictatorship.

He received Salman Rushdie without fear of the wrath of Tehran, and the Dalai Lama without fear of the wrath of Beijing and Moscow. Looking at the pathetic farce of December 4, he managed to say that we do not have democracy, but there is a cruel mafia post-communism. He called us to fight him... Vaclav Havel, Knight of the Free Image.

Our friend and comrade-in-arms can sleep peacefully: evil wizards and giants will no longer disturb the peace of the Czech Republic. The absurdity collapsed.