An uncanny era
Subtitle: conversations between Václav Havel and Adam Michnik
By: edited, translated, and with an introduction by Elzbieta Matynia
Contributors: Michnik, Adam; Matynia, Elżbieta
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2014
Place of publication: New Haven; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 252
ISBN-13: 9780300204032
Copyright date: 2014
Subjects: Political and social views; Politics and government; Political culture; History; Democracy; Social change; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Government / Comparative; POLITICAL SCIENCE / History & Theory; HISTORY / Europe / Eastern
Description: "Czech playwright and dissident Václav Havel first encountered Polish historian and dissident Adam Michnik in 1978 at a clandestine meeting on a mountaintop along the Polish-Czechoslovak border. This initial meeting of two extraordinary thinkers who "plotted" democracy, and designed an effective peaceful strategy for dismantling authoritarian regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, resulted in a lifelong friendship and an extraordinary set of bold conversations conducted over the next two postrevolutionary decades. Havel, president of Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic, and Michnik, editor-in-chief of the largest daily newspaper in the region, provide rare insights into the post-1989 challenges to building new democratic institutions and new habits in the context of an increasingly unsettling political culture. With both dismay and humor, their fascinating exchanges wrestle with the essential question of postrevolutionary life: How does one preserve the revolution's ideals in the real world? At once historically immediate and politically universal, the Havel-Michnik conversations have never before been collected in a single volume in any language"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-241) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: The Path of Friendship / Elzbieta Matynia; title: "Dear Adam, Here's that essay I promised..." : Havel's Instructions on Publishing : The Power of the Powerless (1978); title: "Welcome to freedom, Václav!" (May 1989); title: The Uncanny Era of Post-Communism (Prague, November 30, 1991); title: A Completed Revolution and Belated Avengers (Prague, October 21, 1995); title: Everything Is Still in Motion (Prague, November 21, 1998); title: An Account of Our Victories, an Accounting of Our Freedom (Olomouc, October 11, 2003); title: The Times Are Favoring What's Mean (Prague and Warsaw, October 4, 2007); title: The President and the Playwright (Warsaw, November 15-17, 2008); title: When Socrates Became Pericles : Václav Havel's "Great History" (October 1, 2011) / Adam Michnik ; translated by Agnieszka Marczyk.