"I WONDER why it is at times when everything is forbidden, even history, that the situation always suddenly explodes: the ice cracks.and people's silent thoughts, creations and defiance suddenly fly out like a cork from a bottle. Society develops in shock; for a long time nothing happens and then everything happens."
Probably no other political leaders in Europe embodies the recent history of his country more precisely than President Vaclav Havel, who starts a three-day state visit to Ireland today. The quotation above, from Eda Kriseova's biography published in Czech in 1993, describes the process through which he emerged.
Back in the 1960s, Havel was at the heart of the protest movement when Soviet tanks crushed dissent on the streets of Prague, and in 1989, a dishevelled figure in jeans and loose sweater suddenly appeared as the articulate voice of Czechoslovak democracy.
In that new dawn after the overthrow of communism, people traced a clear line between the Prague Spring of 1968 and its brutal suppression, and the precipitation into political and economic freedom 21 years later. "It's as if the clock stopped for 20 years and then started again, with the same people doing the same things, just a bit older and greyer," an exiled Czech, Jan Kavan, said after returning home. The perception was short-lived and, as with all revolutions, the pragmatists soon began moving in, displacing the idealists.
It is difficult now to realise how, in the oppressive years of the Husak dictatorship, a generation grew up with the comprehensive world view that Havel encapsulated. In 1975, two years before he became a cofounder of Charter 77, the human-rights initiative, he made a statement of political faith that shows astonishing self-confidence at a time when the outlook was bleakest.
"I consider myself a socialist," he said in a samizdat interview with Jiri Lederer. "I even think that I have taken something from Marxism. But I have never identified with the ideology of the communist movement ... and this is probably because the world appears to me a thousand times more complex and mysterious than it does to communists."
Eda Kriseova explains that Havel's bourgeois family background - his grandfather built a number of prominent buildings in Prague, and his mother's father, Hugo Vavrecka, served as ambassador in Budapest and Vienna - made communism an impossible option, and as he loved "exclusion and condemnation", he was also an unlikely capitalist.
Havel once described himself as a zoon politikon (a political animal), involved in active politics only as far as was consistent with being a writer: "Someone who comments on it rather than someone who actually does it. Or more precisely, someone who does it only by commenting on it."
Seven years after the Czechs and Slovaks regained their democracy, he is still widely revered as a philosopher and moral leader (though also hated by some because of his trenchantly critical opposition to nationalism). His deep commitment to the idea of Europe has been expressed in several speeches.
But the major political initiative he attempted to prevent - the break-up of the Czechoslovak federation in 1991 - ended in abject failure. He was refused additional powers which he wanted to counter the collapse of the Czechoslovak federation, and his appeal for a referendum fell on deaf ears.
President Havel was ill and unable to give an interview recently in Prague. But he gave the following written replies to questions:
Is the long delay in the enlargement process by the EU and Nato likely to have an adverse political effect on domestic politics?
I have expressed concern about a certain hesitation that we see in connection with Nato enlargement. Putting off Nato's redefinition and enlargement for too long may increase instability in Europe and stimulate certain Russian interests that did not exist until recently. In this regard, I have indeed called upon the North Atlantic Alliance to proceed in a more resolute, broadminded and energetic fashion.
This is not the case with the European Union. The EU is determined to expand and none of its member-states has actually questioned this decision. The determinant is the completion of the related requirements by the applicant states. Setting the timetable for their admission thus does not appear to me that urgent or problematic.
What we should constantly stress is the historic significance of the enlargement of the European Union; our endeavours in this regard, as far as I can see, have not met with any major resistance or disapproval.
To what extent have your fears of the revival of nationalism in Europe, after the removal of communism, been borne out?
To my mind, the awakening of nations followed by a quest for identity, possibly in the form of independent statehood, is a process that is both understandable and to be expected. The former communist empire imposed upon the peoples under its domination an unnatural uniformity, trying to eradicate or suppress all that was unique, special or diverse.
When, however, the changed circumstances enabled these peoples-to exercise their identity, the danger of nationalism resurfaced, and another dormant demon came to life again.
It seems to me that Yugoslavia is both a major warning and a challenge, and should be seen as such. It should make Europeans act more speedily and effectively in order to build mechanisms that would stop such demons from spreading their evil seed.
If such an infection were allowed, to expand, it would not stop at the borders of that part of Europe which is called post-communist. Inevitably, it would eventually begin to destabilise Western countries as well. We know that various kinds of demons lie dormant in the West too.
Have Ireland and the Czech Republic something to learn from each other as small nations in the EU?
To me, the most important thing is not the size of a nation but its' performance. And there is no reason why small states or members of small nations could not do admirable work.
The trend that I should like to see in the era of Europe's integration is one in which the size and geopolitical weight of nations would not play the main role any longer; instead, increasing emphasis should be given to the actual accomplishments.