Transcending the Clash of Cultures: Democracy’s Forgotten Dimension

Václav Havel, a playwright and one of Europe’s most prominent moral and intellectual figures, was a leading dissident during the period of communist rule. He was elected as the first president of postcommunist Czechoslovakia, and later served as president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. From April to June of 2005, he occupied the Kluge Chair for Modern Culture at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.