Czech leader Vaclav Havel diesPlaywright-turned-politician helped abolish communism in Czechoslovakia, and see the country through peaceful divide.
Vaclav Havel, the playwright-turned-politician who served as the last president of
Czechoslovakia and first president of
the Czech Republic, has died at age 75.
Havel, a former chain-smoker who suffered breathing difficulties, died on Sunday morning at his weekend house in the northern
Czech Republic.
As a dissident playwright, Havel wove theatre into politics to peacefully bring down communism in
Czechoslovakia and become a hero of the epic struggle that ended the Cold War.
Havel was
Czechoslovakia's first democratically elected president after the nonviolent "
Velvet Revolution" that ended four decades of repression by a regime he ridiculed as "
Absurdistan".
As president, he oversaw the country's bumpy transition to democracy and a free-market economy, as well its peaceful 1993 breakup into the
Czech Republic and
Slovakia.
Even out of office, the diminutive Czech remained a world figure. He was part of the "
new Europe" - in the coinage of then-US Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld - of ex-communist countries that stood up for the US when the democracies of "
old Europe" opposed the
2003 Iraq invasion.
Havel left office in 2003, 10 years after
Czechoslovakia broke up and just months before both nations joined the
European Union. He was credited with laying the groundwork that brought his
Czech Republic into the 27-nation bloc, and was president when it joined
NATO in 1999.
Havel was nominated several times for
the Nobel Peace Prize, and collected dozens of other accolades worldwide for his efforts as
a global ambassador of conscience, defending the downtrodden from
Darfur to
Myanmar.
Among his many honours were Sweden's prestigious
Olof Palme Prize and
the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest US civilian award, bestowed on him by President
George W. Bush for being "
one of liberty's great heroes".
An avowed
peacenik whose heroes included rockers such as
Frank Zappa, he never quite shed his flower-child past and often signed his name with a small heart as a flourish.
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.
