Václav Havel

I was remembering as Guy was speaking in terms of people's kind of what they get encoded with.

A story after the fall of the Berlin Wall where Vaclav Havel, the dissident, then became president.

And he was a bit troubled because he suddenly found the television news wanted to kind of do things like, oh, Mr. Havel and bowing down before him.

And he had to say, no, I don't really want you to bow down before me.

Coming up on today's show, Bohemian crown jewels go on display at Prague Castle, highlighting Habsburg rule.

A new exhibition highlights Vaclav Havel's relationship with architecture and how he transformed Prague Castle.

The campaign encouraging children to walk, bike, and take public transport to school.

A once-secret Soviet bunker built to survive a nuclear blast is open to visitors in Czechia.

The exhibition will also feature objects connected with the administration and protection of the jewels, including historic keys used by the seven guardians of the crown jewels who need to get together to open the chamber with the priceless artifacts.

Danielle Lazarova with that report.

Václav Havel would have turned 90 this October.

A new exhibition in Brno looks beyond his familiar roles as playwright, dissident and president to explore his relationship with architecture.

People said, "Thank God.

That makes sense." You know, and I'm, I, I, I was reminded of that quote from, uh, Václav Havel, the Czechoslovakian president, the former president and dissident, and he said something to...

You know, I'm gonna sort of butcher his, his quote, but it was along the lines of, "Real hope is not the belief that things are gonna work out well.

It's the belief or the knowing that, um, that things are starting to make sense." And I think that's where so many of us arrived.

At the same time, each of these, these are, these are ethical and moral decisions that individuals make, and I don't think you can take away that component of it.

But I think if you look at it, you know, historically, internationally, the people who are, you know, real moral heroes, I mean, who are willing to sacrifice their lives for, for different kinds of, of princ- liberal principles, Nelson Mandela, Václav Havel, those people are really rare.

And you shouldn't go through life thinking, "Well, if I were in, in that position, I would surely be one of them." We'd, we'd probably like to be-

Yeah, yeah.

As Special Assistant and National Security Council Director for Presidents Clinton and Bush, Ambassador to Poland, and the Assistant Secretary of State for Europe from 2005 to 2009, he helped craft the policy of NATO enlargement to Central European nations.

He was one of those who recognized the importance of engaging with and encouraging dissident figures behind the Iron Curtain, such as Poland's Lech Walesa and Czechoslovakia's Václav Havel.

He also helped lead the West's response to the annexation of Crimea in 2014, acting as State Department Coordinator for Sanctions Policy, placing sanctions on key individuals, oil extraction, large state banks, and military equipment.

In our wide-reaching conversation, he shares his candid memories of what it was like being in the room for many of the most impactful decisions made in Washington as the Iron Curtain fell.

In '93, I came back to the Clinton administration after three years in Warsaw, and it was clear to me that the Poles had made a success of the initial transformation from communist poverty to a free market democracy.

I, I knew by '93 that they were gonna succeed, and the Poles were beginning to realize it, too.

And the Polish message to me as I left for Washington was, "You need to bring us into NATO because there's a window to make good on basically Franklin Roosevelt's promise of the Atlantic Charter, not his miserable compromise with Stalin at Yalta." And their message was, "Don't screw it up this time, guys." It was a powerful message, and that was Lech Walesa's and Václav Havel's message to Bill Clinton when he was thinking these things through in '93 and '94.

And these two more different individuals you cannot imagine [laughs], right? Havel's the Central European thoughtful intellectual, Walesa, this charismatic, explosively powerful leader of a successful movement, and they gave Clinton exactly the same message when they met him in '93 and '94, and they just pounded him.

I want to welcome everyone back to The Pete Kenyatta Show.

This is part six of my reading of The Power of the Powerless by Baklav Havel.

We're up to part 18, and I'm just going to jump right in.

Part 18.